Hurricane Irma slams into Florida Keys

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Trump speaks to governors & senators, approves disaster areas

This handout photo provided by NASA/NOAA/CIRA shows this geocolor image captured by the NOAA-NASA satellite GOES-16 of Hurricane Irma passing the eastern end of Cuba at about 8:00 am EDT on Sept 8, towards the coast of Florida. Hurricane Irma on Thursday slashed its way through the Caribbean towards the United States, transforming tropical island paradises into scenes of death and ruin.

MIAMI, Sept 10, (AFP): Hurricane Irma’s eyewall slammed into the Florida Keys Sunday, lashing the island chain with fearsome wind gusts as it bears down on the state’s west coast where a mass exodus has turned cities into ghost towns. Irma, packing maximum sustained winds of 130 miles (215 kms) per hour, was upgraded overnight to a Category Four storm as it closed in on the Keys, the National Hurricane Center said. Six million people — one third of the state’s population — have been ordered to evacuate their homes ahead of the monster storm. The eye of the hurricane was 20 miles east-southeast of Key West as of 8 am local time (12:00 GMT), threatening dangerous storm surges up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) — enough to cover a house. “Everyone In The Florida Keys … It Is Time To Hunker Down,” the NWS warned before the hurricane rammed into the tropical islands popular as a destination for fishing, boating and scuba diving.

Wrath
For those still at home, it was too late to fl ee the wrath of one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to slam stormprone Florida, after cutting a path of devastation across the Caribbean. In Key West, police opened a “shelter of last resort” for those who had ignored evacuation orders. The cities of Naples, Fort Myers and the densely populated peninsulas of Tampa Bay on Florida’s west coast were in the crosshairs of the historic storm, which was churning slowly northwest at eight miles per hour. “It’s going to be horrible,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said of Irma on NBC television Sunday morning. “Now we have to hunker down and watch out for each other.”

More than 430,000 homes and businesses were already without power, mainly in southern Florida, according to utility company Florida Power and Light, which said it had “safely shut down” one of two nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power plant. At least 25 people have been killed since Irma began its march through the Caribbean, smashing through a string of islands from tiny Barbuda on Wednesday, to the tropical paradises of St Barts and St Martin, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos.

Terrified Cubans who rode out Irma in coastal towns — after it made landfall Friday as a maximum-strength Category Five storm on the Camaguey archipelago — reported “deafening” winds, uprooted trees and power lines, and blown rooftops. There were no immediate reports of casualties but it caused “significant damage,” and enormous waves lashed the Malecon, Havana’s emblematic seafront, causing seawaters to penetrate deep into the capital, AFP journalists reported. Irma was smacking the Keys 57 years to the day that Hurricane Donna hit the same area in 1960, destroying nearly 75 percent of the island chain’s buildings. The NWS urged Floridians to keep their shoes on, to take shelter in interior rooms — far from windows — and use helmets, mattresses, pillows or blankets for protection.

Shelter
At North Collier Regional Park, a shelter outside Naples, anxious evacuees prayed their loved ones would remain safe. Viviana Sierra, who sought refuge together with her dog, parents and brother, was sanguine about the prospect of finding her home and belongings destroyed. “You can replace material things but your life is very important so I think it’s better that we stay here,” she said. Irma was expected to move along or near Florida’s southwest Gulf coast later Sunday and into Monday. But the hurricane is so wide that authorities were bracing for destructive storm surges on both coasts of Florida and the Keys. In related news, Trump spoke to the governors of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee on Sunday, the White House said, as Hurricane Irma’s path moved away from the lower Florida Keys westward to the Gulf Coast and states to the north. Trump has spoken regularly to Florida Governor Rick Scott and US Senator Marco Rubio, both Republicans, and spoke on Sunday with US Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, the White House said. The Republican president also issued a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday and expanded federal funds available to the US Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Irma, the White House said.

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