IRMA BEGINS ASSAULT ON FLORIDA
Storm expected to remain a Category 4 as it hits state’s west coast
Large waves produced by Hurricane Irma crash into the end of Anglins Fishing Pier in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Sunday. The category 4 hurricane made landfall in the United States in the Florida Keys after raking across the north coast of Cuba.
ST PETERSBURG: Hurricane Irma roared through the Florida Keys on Sunday with punishing 130 mph winds and began pushing its way north, knocking out power to more than 1.5 million people across the state and collapsing a construction crane over the Miami skyline.
The nearly 400-mile-wide storm is expected to make a slow, ruinous march up Florida’s west coast, straight toward the heavily populated Tampa-St Petersburg area by Monday morning.
Streets emptied across the bottom half of the Florida peninsula, and some 127,000 people huddled in shelters.
“Pray, pray for everybody in Florida,” Governor Rick Scott said. Flooding, roof damage and floating appliances and furniture were reported in the low-lying Keys, but with the storm still hitting around midday, the full extent of Irma’s wrath was not clear. There were no immediate confirmed reports of any deaths from the storm.
While the projected track showed Irma raking the state’s Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the entire state — including the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people — was in extreme danger from the monstrously wide storm.
Nearly 7 million people in the Southeast were warned to get out of harm’s way, including 6.4 million in Florida alone.
About 30,000 people heeded orders to evacuate the Keys as the storm closed in, but an untold number refused to leave, in part because to many storm-hardened residents, staying behind in the face of danger is a point of pride.
In downtown Miami, one of two dozen construction cranes looming over the skyline collapsed atop a high-rise in Irma’s winds. There was no immediate word on any damage or injuries. City officials said it would have taken about two weeks to have moved the cranes out of harm’s way. Irma made landfall just after 9 am at Cudjoe Key, about 20 miles outside Key West, forecasters said. By late morning, it was advancing toward Florida’s southwestern corner, moving at 9 mph.
Key West Police urged anyone riding out the storm in that city to “resist the urge” to go outside during the eye, the deceptively calm interlude in the middle of a hurricane. “Dangerous winds will follow quickly,” police said in a Facebook post.
“Once this system passes through, it’s going to be a race to save lives and sustain lives,” Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Brock Long said. Irma was at one time the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic, with peak wind speed of 185 mph.