Irma lashes Florida with powerful winds
MIAMI (AFP) — Hurricane Irma regained strength yesterday as it began pummeling Florida, threatening almost the entire southeastern US state after cutting a deadly path of destruction through the Caribbean.
The storm, packing winds of 210 kilometers per hour, was upgraded to a Category 4 storm as it closed in on the island chain known as the Florida Keys, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Tens of thousands of Floridians were hunkering down in shelters for a direct hit from the monster storm.
More than 6.3 million — nearly a third of the state’s population — were ordered to evacuate.
For those still at home, it was already too late to escape the wrath of what could be the worst hurricane in stormprone Florida.
”If you have been ordered to evacuate anywhere in the state, you need to leave right now. Not tonight. Not in an hour. Now. You are running out of time to make a decision,” Gov. Rick Scott said hours before wind gusts began to lash the Keys.
Florida Power and Light said more than 170,000 homes and businesses in the state had lost power, as the storm churned about 115 kilometers south-southeast of Key West.
Its eye was expected to cross the Lower Florida Keys within hours before moving “near or along” the peninsular state’s west coast, where it threatened storm surges of up to 15 feet — enough to cover a house.
At North Collier Regional Park, a designated shelter just outside the city of Naples, anxious evacuees prayed they and their loved ones would remain safe when the storm made landfall.
”All we wanted to make sure is to feel safe and whatever happens we just have to start I guess from the beginning,” Viviana Sierra said.
MacDill Air Force Base, the military installation home to US Central Command, issued mandatory evacuation orders with the eye of the storm expected to pass near or over its home city of Tampa early today. The Kennedy Space Center was also closed.
At least 25 people have been killed since Irma began its devastating march through the Caribbean earlier this week.
Terrified Cubans who rode out Irma in coastal towns — after the storm made landfall Friday as a maximum-strength Category 5 storm on the Camaguey archipelago — reported “deafening” winds, uprooted trees and power lines, and blown rooftops.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but officials reported “significant damage.” A total of 1.5 million people were evacuated.
Authorities in Havana were evacuating people from lowlying districts at risk from Atlantic storm surges.
Enormous waves lashed the Malecon, the capital’s emblematic seafront, causing seawaters to penetrate some 820 feet into the capital, AFP journalists reported.
In Florida, cities on both the east and west coasts took on the appearance of ghost towns, as nervous residents heeded insistent evacuation orders.