Storm devours islands

RICO» Hurricane SAN JUAN, PUERTO Irma lashed Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds Wednesday night, leaving nearly 900,000 people without power as authorities struggled to get aid to small Caribbean islands devastated by the historic storm.

Florida rushed to prepare for a possible direct hit on the Miami area by the Category 5 storm with potentially catastrophic 185 mph winds.

“This thing is a buzz saw,” warned Colorado State University meteorology professor Phil Klotzbach. “I don’t see any way out of it.”

Nearly every building on the island of Barbuda was damaged when the eye of the storm passed almost directly overhead early Wednesday and about 60 percent of the island’s approximately 1,400 people were left homeless, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told The Associated Press.

“Either they were totally demolished or they would have lost their roof,” Browne said after returning to Antigua from a plane trip to the neighboring island. “It is just really a horrendous situation.”

He said roads and telecommunications systems were destroyed, and recovery will take months, if not years. A 2-year-old child was killed as a family tried to escape a damaged home during the storm, Browne said.

As the storm moved west, it tore up the small islands in its path. On St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Laura Strickling spent 12 hours hunkered down with her husband and 1-year-old daughter in a boarded-up basement apartment with no power as the storm raged outside. They emerged to find the lush island in tatters, with many of their neighbors’ homes damaged and the dense vegetation largely gone.

“There are no leaves. It is crazy. One of the things we loved about St. Thomas is that it was so green. And it’s gone,” said Strickling, who moved to the island with her husband three years ago from Washington, D.C. “It will take years for this community to get back on its feet.”

Significant effects also were reported on St. Martin, an island split between French and Dutch control. Photos and video circulating on social media showed major damage to the airport in Philipsburg and the coastal village of Marigot heavily flooded. France sent emergency food and water rations there and to the French island of St. Bart’s, where Irma ripped off roofs and knocked out all electricity. Dutch marines who flew to St. Martin and two other Dutch islands hammered by Irma reported extensive damage but no deaths or injuries.

This is only the second time on Earth since satellites started tracking storms about 40 years ago that one maintained 185 mph winds for more than 24 hours, CSU’s Klotzbach said.

By Wednesday evening, the center of the storm was about 50 miles north of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and heading west-northwest at 16 mph.

More than half the island of Puerto Rico was without power and nearly 50,000 without water, the U.S. territory’s emergency management agency said. Fourteen hospitals were using generators after losing power, and trees and light poles were strewn across roads.

The tiny island of Culebra reported sustained winds of 88 mph and wind gusts of 110 mph.

The U.S. National Weather Service said Puerto Rico had not seen a hurricane of Irma’s magnitude since Hurricane San Felipe in 1928, which killed 2,748 people in Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and Florida.

Puerto Rico’s public power company has cut back on staffers and maintenance workers amid a decadelong economic crisis and the agency’s director warned some areas could be without power from four to six months because the infrastructure has deteriorated so badly.

President Donald Trump this week approved an emergency declaration for the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. That means the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies can remove debris and give other services that largely will be paid for by the U.S. government.

EPA officials said their biggest concerns were oil spills and power disruptions to water supply systems.

“No matter what precautions we take, the coastal flooding will impact oil tanks,” said Catherine McCabe, a regional administrator.

Another concern was the 20 Superfund sites in Puerto Rico and the three in the U.S. Virgin islands, given that most were near the coast, she said. She said EPA officials in New Jersey were on standby to fly down after the hurricane passed through.

State maintenance worker Juan Tosado said he was without power for three months after Hurricane Hugo killed dozens of people in Puerto Rico in 1989.

“I expect the same from this storm,” he said. “It’s going to be bad.”

Tourist Pauline Jackson, a 59-year-old registered nurse from Tampa, Fla., puffed on her last cigarette as a San Juan hotel prepared to shutter its doors ahead of the storm.

“I’m in a hurricane here, and when I get home, I’ll be in the same hurricane. It’s crazy,” she said.

She tried to leave before of the storm but all flights were sold out, and she worried about her home in Tampa.

“When you’re from Florida, you understand a Category 5 hurricane,” said Jackson, who was scheduled to fly out Friday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Irma’s winds would fluctuate, but the storm probably would remain at Category 4 or 5 for the next day or two as it roared past the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Turks & Caicos and parts of the Bahamas. Evacuations from high-risk areas were ordered throughout the path of the storm.

By early Sunday, Irma is expected to hit Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott said he planned to activate 7,000 National Guard soldiers by Friday and warned that Irma is “bigger, faster and stronger” than Hurricane Andrew. Andrew pummeled south Florida 25 years ago and wiped out entire neighborhoods with ferocious winds.

Trump also declared an emergency in Florida, and authorities in the Bahamas said they were evacuating six southern islands.

Experts worried that Irma could rake the entire Florida east coast from Miami to Jacksonville and head into Savannah, Ga., and the Carolinas, striking highly populated and developed areas.

“This could easily be the most costly storm in U.S. history, which is saying a lot, considering what just happened two weeks ago,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

Because of the uncertainty this far out, authorities in Miami held off on ordering any widespread evacuations. The mayor of MiamiDade County activated the emergency operation center and urged residents to have three days of food and water.

The State Department authorized voluntary evacuation of U.S. diplomats and their families from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba, where the storm was expected to arrive by Friday.