Latest on Irma aftermath: 9.5M Floridians

Florida officials say crews are restoring power across the state, but 9.5 million people remain without electricity. State Emergency Management Center officials say they restored power to 1.7 million homes and businesses on Tuesday. Of the three South Florida counties that were hit the hardest, Palm Beach is the only one where more than half have power. Hurricane-scarred Florida is taking stock of the damage after Irma – weakened to a tropical storm on Monday – left the state to menace Georgia and Alabama as a posttropical cyclone. Damage to communities like Tampa and Miami wasn’t as bad as predicted because of a last-minute change of course: The storm had been expected to hit Florida’s east coast at full strength, but it instead it went west, strafing the other side of the peninsula with less force and causing less extensive (though still severe) flooding. Irma was still a deadly disaster, in Florida as elsewhere in its path. As of Tuesday, Irma was responsible for at least six deaths in Florida, three in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean. Florida Governor Rick Scott called the storm “devastating” after a Monday flyover Hurricane Irma’s death toll, devastation and predicted path - everything we know. Hurricane Irma hit Florida on Sunday, bringing with it rising seas, floods and 130mph winds. At least four people are known to have died and power cuts have affected more than three million people. Having pounded Cuba the day before, the superstorm left many of that country’s northern coastal towns, as well as the Florida Keys, with substantial damage, before beginning to move up the west coast of the state, towards Tampa, on Sunday evening Some of the record Irma has broken Irma set plenty of records, according to a twopage list compiled by Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach: Its 185 mph (297 kph) winds were the high est on record for the open Atlantic ocean, outside the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean sea. Only one other storm in the entire At- of the Keys, describing overturned mobile homes, washed-ashore boats and rampant flood damage. As of Tuesday, a stunning 13 million Florida residents were without electricity – twothirds of the third-largest state’s residents – as tropical heat returned across the peninsula following the storm. More than 1.2 million customers in Georgia and 220,000 in South Carolina had lost power. Ahead of Irma’s arrival, the U.S. Southeast saw one of the largest evacuations in American history, in which nearly seven million people in the Southeast were warned to seek shelter elsewhere, including 6.4 million in Florida alone. By the time Irma blows over, insured damages in the United States could be anywhere from $15- to $50-billion, or $20- to $65-billion if the Caribbean damage is included, according to one Sept. 9 estimate by AIR Worldwide. Canadians in the U.S. who need help can contact the Washington embassy at 1-844880-6519. The Red Cross and UNICEF are collecting donations for Irma relief. Canadians trapped by Irma on St. Maarten share harrowing stories Canadians who are now back on home soil after getting trapped in the Caribbean last week by Hurricane Irma continue to describe a chaotic and frightening scene. One man who had been on the Dutch island of St. Maarten when the hurricane’s winds tore it apart told CTV Montreal that he spent days with limited access to food, water or shelter, unable to get on commercial flights out of the country. The man said he only escaped the islantic basin - 1980’s Allen - was stronger. It spent three consecutive days as a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane, the longest in the satellite era. It generated the second most Accumulated Cyclone Energy - a key measurement that combines strength and duration - in the satellite era.It was the strongest storm to hit the Leeward Islands. It’s the first Category 5 hurricane to hit Cuba, which regularly gets assaulted by hurricanes, in nearly 100 years. Three million without power Hurricane Irma knocked out power to more than 3 million homes and businesses in Florida on Sunday, threatening millions more as it crept up the state’s west coast, and full restoration of service could take weeks, Reuters reports. So far, the brunt of the storm has affected land after a U.S. military plane airlifted him to Puerto Rico. “Thank God for the American military,” he said. “There was nobody there for Canada nobody there helping any Canadians.” The man said there was widespread looting and the only food and water available were rations from the Dutch military. “You couldn’t even go to a grocery store to buy anything because they were being robbed top to bottom,” he said. “We should have our military to evacuate people in situations like this,” the man added. Another woman who arrived at Montreal’s Trudeau airport Tuesday after several frightening days on St. Maarten said she was disappointed in the Canadian government’s response. The woman told CTV Montreal that she had been vacationing in a rented waterfront home but moved to a hotel in anticipation of the hurricane. The storm ripped the hotel’s roof right off, so she went to the airport but there were no flights available for Canadians or any government officials to assist her. “Only Americans and Dutch (were) leaving,” she said. “And Canadians, we had nothing.” That woman finally got a WestJet flight to Toronto on Monday. She said WestJet provided a hotel for her on Monday night before she flew back to Montreal Tuesday. “Thank God for WestJet,” she said. In total, 301 passengers arrived on WestJet and Air Canada flights in Toronto on Monday from St. Maarten and Turks and Caicos, the two hard-hit islands where several hundred Canadians were staying during the storm. In addition to expressing relief to being back Florida Power Light’s customers in the states’ southern and eastern sections, and its own operations were not immune, either. “We are not subject to any special treatment from Hurricane Irma. We just experienced a power outage at our command center. We do have backup generation,” FPL spokesman Rob Gould said on Sunday. FPL, the biggest power company in Florida, said more than 2.9 million of its customers were without power by 7:40 p.m. in Canada, many of the passengers who landed in Toronto Monday night offered sympathies to those who live on the islands affected by the storm. “It’s decimated the people there,” said passenger Kyla Jorgenson. “My heart goes out to them because they can’t get off (the islands).” Passenger Andrew Trozzi said the ordeal was frustrating, but nowhere near as difficult for him as it was for the locals. “They have nothing now,” he said. Naail Falah, who was there to put the “finishing touches” on a home he recently purchased in Turks and Caicos. “We were stuck,” he told CTV News Channel. “It was a very painful situation.” Falah said his new home sustained only minor damage in the storm, but others were not so lucky. “We did not want to leave,” he said. “There were so many people that were in so much worse condition than we were.” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday that 53 non-Canadians were also on the flights out of St. Maarten and Turks and Caicos on Monday. Those passengers were accepted because there were still empty seats on the flights, and no Canadians were turned away as a result, Freeland said. The federal government said another 390 passengers were brought back to Canada over the weekend. (2030 GMT), mostly in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. More than 200,000 had electricity restored, mostly by automated devices. Trump declares disaster in Florida

President Donald Trump has declared a major disaster in the state of Florida, making federal aid available to people affected by Hurricane Irma in nine counties already hit by the storm. The federal help includes temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans for uninsured property losses and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover in the counties of Charlotte, Collier, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Pinellas, and Sarasota. Federal funding also is available to governments and non-profit organizations for emergencies in all 67 Florida counties. For the first 30 days, that money will cover 100 percent of the costs of some emergency responses.