SKELETON KEYS
Hurricane ravages Fla. isles
Hurricane Irma walloped the Florida Keys, leaving a “humanitarian crisis” in its wake. The storm wracked the idyllic archipelago with 130-mph winds, causing widespread destruction.
“My heart goes out to the people in the Keys — there’s devastation and I just hope everybody survived,” Gov. Rick Scott said. “It’s horrible.”
The Florida Keys are in the throes of a “humanitarian crisis” after Hurricane Irma lashed the archipelago with 130-mph winds, causing widespread destruction and leaving the residents who stayed behind without water, power or cellphone service — and those who evacuated with no idea when they can return.
“My heart goes out to the people in the Keys — there’s devastation and I just hope everybody survived,” Gov. Rick Scott said Monday after touring the destruction.
“It’s horrible what we saw,” Scott added. “We saw a lot of boats washed ashore; we saw basically every trailer park — they’re overturned. I don’t think I saw one trailer park where almost everything wasn’t overturned.”
The storm surge swallowed one of the islands and left another incommunicado, according to state Rep. Holly Raschein.
“Marathon was completely underwater,” said state Rep. Holly Raschein, according to The Miami Herald.
“Cudjoe Key took a direct hit; we’re still having problems communicating there. Flooding on Big Pine. It’s pretty widespread.”
The Keys’ more than 70,000 residents were ordered evacuated ahead of the storm, but an estimated 10,000 refused to leave and instead hunkered down as Irma blew down trees, power lines — and homes.
Late Monday, the Department of Defense said that, because of the unlivable conditions, it might now have to remove some of those 10,000.
Monroe County officials describe the Keys as currently being like a third-world country.
“The wind may have stopped blowing, but for most of the Florida Keys, there is no fuel, electricity, running water or cell ser- vice,” a statement from the county read. “For many people, supplies are running low and anxiety is running high.”
“This is a humanitarian crisis,” Monroe County Emergency Management Director Martin Senterfitt said Sunday as the storm was barreling through the islands.
At least one man was killed in the Keys after his truck was blown into a tree on Sunday, and officials fear more casualties will be discovered as rescue workers pick through the rubble.
The then-Category 4 storm made landfall Sunday morning in Cudjoe Key, its powerful bands raking much of the 110-mile-long island chain and dumping up to a foot of rain.
The storm is expected to cause a total $20 billion to $40 billion in damages in the United States alone, according to catastrophemodeling firm AIR Worldwide.
The Navy sent the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, as well the USS Iwo Jima and the USS New York to aid the searchand-rescue efforts in the Keys, according to Scott. Air Force and Air National Guard members are also flying rescue missions.
Key West — the chain’s southernmost islet — fared better than others, but officials there had to turn away aid-seekers on Monday because they were having trouble feeding their own residents.
“We cannot support another mouth in Key West,” City Manager Jim Scholl said, according to The Miami Herald.
And the Monroe County statement said bluntly, “The Keys are not open for business.”
Officials plan to turn on water service briefly to the lower Keys on Tuesday, but they expect it can only last for two hours before “major leaks” further up the line make it “impossible to sustain continuous water,” according to a statement that also warned that residents would have to boil any water coming out of taps.
By Monday afternoon, four teams of state transportation workers had cleared just six of the 42 bridges that string together the small islands.
With US Route 1 being the only road connecting the Keys to one another, crews must clear the roadway before more aid can flow into the hard-hit area, according to officials.
Meanwhile, tempers flared as residents trying to re-enter the island chain from mainland Florida were turned away.
People protested when Monroe County police allowed two unmarked vehicles through the checkpoint in Florida City, near Key Largo, after saying that only utility companies and state contractors would be allowed to pass, according to the Miami Herald.
“That’s bulls--t!” a Keys resident, who refused to give his name, shouted to cops at a RaceTrac gas station. “Those people are tourists!”
The Monroe County Sheriff ’s Office and Florida Highway Patrol set up the roadblock, which prevented residents from jumping onto US Route 1 or Card Sound Road to make their way to the Keys.
Among those who were permitted access were members of the Florida National Guard, who showed up before sunrise to help clean up the debris-littered roads.
It may be days before residents who evacuated can re-enter, according to White House Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert.
“The Keys are going to take a while,” Bossert said during a White House briefing.
“I would expect that the Keys are not fit for re-entry for regular citizenry for weeks.”
But locking residents out will only make them hesitant to follow evacuation orders in the future, they complained.
County officials said Monday night that they were working on a time frame for residents to be able to return to Key West and that they would have more information Tuesday.