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Weakening but still potent Irma aims full force at Florida’s Gulf Coast

A weakening but still potent Hurricane Irma lashed Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday with tree-bending winds, pounding rain and surging surf, leaving millions of homes without power, while flooding streets and swaying skyscrapers across the state in Miami. Hurricane Irma walloped Cuba’s northern coast on Saturday as a Category 5 storm, as millions of Florida residents were ordered to evacuate after the storm killed 28 people in the eastern Caribbean and left catastrophic destruction in its wake.

UPDATE: In storm-battered towns up and down Florida’s western shore – from Naples and Fort Myers north through Sarasota, Tampa and St. Petersburg – residents huddled with relatives, neighbors and pets to ride out a hurricane that had ranked as one of the Atlantic’s most powerful in a century, Reuters reports.

Hurricane-force winds extended across portions of central Florida on Sunday night, the National Hurricane Center reported.

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“I’ve lived here 21 years, and I never imagined we’d get a direct hit,” Shelli Connelly, 55, said as she stood on the sixth-floor balcony of her high-rise condo on Marco Island, where Irma made its second Florida landfall hours after barreling through the resort archipelago of the Florida Keys.

Irma was forecast to continue churning northward along Florida’s Gulf Coast through the night, further weakening along the way before diminishing to tropical-storm status over far northern Florida or southern Georgia on Monday.

UPDATE: According to the NHC, Irma is 10 miles Southeast of Naples, which is expected to take the brunt of the hurricane in Florida. Irma is still at category 3 hurricane.

UPDATE: Eye of hurricane made landfall in Marco Island in Florida as a category 3 storm, the National Hurricane Center reports.

UPDATE: Hurricane Irma knocked out power to about 2 million homes and businesses in Florida on Sunday and threatened millions more as it crept up the state’s west coast, the state’s electric utilities said on Sunday, and full restoration of service will take weeks.

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UPDATE: Tampa mayor declares indefinite curfew in Florida City starting at 6 p.m. on Sunday as hurricane nears.

UPDATE: Three fatalities confirmed so far. A driver lost his life when the truck he was driving was swept away by high winds and smashed into a tree. Other two fatalities have been reported earlier by the Highway Patrol, following a car crash also caused by the winds and heavy rain.

UPDATE: 1.6 million homes and businesses are without power, Florida companies reported.

UPDATE: U.S. President Donald 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 U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, both Republicans, and spoke on Sunday with U.S. 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 U.S. Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Irma, the White House said.

UPDATE: About 1.1 million homes and businesses have lost power in Florida as Hurricane Irma pummeled the southern part of the state, Florida Power & Light (FPL) said on Sunday. FPL, the biggest power company in Florida, said on its website that over 1,094,000 customers without power. Separately, Keys Energy Services, which serves the Florida Keys, reported 29,000 outages earlier Sunday on its website.

UPDATE: NHC says Irma is moving North-Northwest at 8 mph with sustained winds of 130 mph.

UPDATE: A powerful sea surge will accompany Hurricane Irma as the storm moves through Florida, and that blast of ocean water could badly damage coastal areas, Florida Governor Rick Scott said.

“I am very concerned about the west coast,” Scott said of Florida’s western shoreline that faces the Gulf of Mexico and is being hit hard by Irma.

Scott was talking on Fox News Sunday.

Later, on ABC News, Scott said: “This storm surge is just deadly.”

UPDATE: The new path forged by Hurricane Irma posed a severe threat to Florida’s west coast and the Florida Keys, the head of the U.S. federal emergency agency said on Sunday, and the storm was bringing tornado watches and warnings around the state.

“This is a worst case scenario for Monroe County, the Florida Keys and the west coast of Florida,” Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the “Fox News Sunday” program.

“Any time you’re in that northeast quadrant as the storm is moving forward, that’s where the maximum radius winds are that define the intensity of the storm,” he said. “That’s where the storm surge is most prevalent and the inland winds are going to be tough.”

UPDATE: The National Hurricane Center forecast potentially deadly storm surges – water driven ashore by the winds – of up to 15 feet (4.6 m) along some parts of the coast. As the northern edge of the storm reached the Florida Keys archipelago off the tip of southern Florida, lashing rains and winds knocked out power to nearly 600,000 homes and businesses on the mainland, according to utilities.

“Pray for us,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said in an ABC News interview as his state braced for the massive storm, which has already left a trail of destruction through the Caribbean.

UPDATE: Trump promises Florida all the support it needs to rebuild after Irma, gov. Scott told reporters.

UPDATE: Irma makes first fatalities as Florida Highway patrol reports two dead in car crash cause by high winds.

UPDATE: Irma, at 40 miles South-Southeast of Key West, the National Hurricane Centers says.

UPDATE: The storm was a Category 4 hurricane about 70 miles (115 km) south-southeast of Key West, Florida, as of 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) on Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (210 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. It was on a path that would take it along the state’s Gulf of Mexico coast near population centers including Tampa and St. Petersburg, it said.

UPDATE: NHC says Irma at 17 miles off Key West. Maximum sustained winds at 130 mph.

UPDATE: Hurricane Irma was set to make landfall in Florida on Sunday with devastating winds and life-threatening storm surges, prompting one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history, after a destructive march up Cuba’s northern coast.

The storm was about 90 miles (145 kms) southeast of Key West, Florida at midnight, with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph (193 kph).

The city of Miami imposed a curfew until 7 a.m. on Sunday and more than 220,000 customers in Florida were without power on Sunday morning, utilities reported.

“This is a life-threatening situation,” the center said.

UPDATE: 6.3 million Floridians were ordered to evacuate. “The storm surge comes after the wind. Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down.,” governor Rick Scott told Floridians in the last update.

UPDATE: Floridians brace for superstorm as winds hit the coast. People urged to stay in shelters. 

Irma struck Camaguey Archipelago with 160 mph (260 kph) winds early on Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, after upgrading the storm late on Friday to its most powerful classification.

Irma, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to hit Florida on Sunday morning, bringing massive damage from wind and flooding to the fourth-largest state by population.

The scenes along Cuba’s north central coast were gradually coming to resemble the horrors of those of other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma barreled in for a direct hit at Ciego de Avila province around midnight.

Choppy seas, grey skies, sheets of rain, bending palm trees, huge waves crashing over sea walls and downed power lines filled state-run television’s evening news cast.

Irma was forecast to bring dangerous storm surges of up to 10 feet (3 meters) to parts of Cuba’s northern coast and the central and northwestern Bahamas.

Meteorologists warned that by Saturday morning scenes of far greater devastation were sure to emerge as Irma worked her way along the northern coast westward through Sancti Spiritus and Villa Clara provinces where it is forecast to turn north toward Florida.

Irma was about 275 miles (440 km) south-southeast of Miami, the NHC said in its latest advisory.

With the storm barreling toward the United States, officials ordered an historic evacuation in Florida that has been made more difficult by clogged highways, gasoline shortages and the challenge of moving older people.

The United States has been hit by only three Category 5 storms since 1851, and Irma is far larger than the last one in 1992, Hurricane Andrew, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“We are running out of time. If you are in an evacuation zone, you need to go now. This is a catastrophic storm like our state has never seen,” Governor Rick Scott told reporters.

A total of 5.6 million people, or 25 percent of the state’s population, were ordered to evacuate Florida, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a videotaped statement that Irma was “a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential” and called on people to heed recommendations from government officials and law enforcement. In Palm Beach, Trump’s waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was ordered evacuated.

‘DON’T BE COMPLACENT’

Irma was set to hit the United States two weeks after Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, struck Texas, killing about 60 people and causing property damage estimated at up to $180 billion in Texas and Louisiana. Officials were preparing a massive response, the head of FEMA said.

About 9 million people in Florida may lose power, some for weeks, said Florida Power & Light Co, which serves almost half of the state’s 20.6 million residents.

Amid the exodus, nearly one-third of all gas stations in Florida’s metropolitan areas were out of gasoline, with scattered outages in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to Gasbuddy.com, a retail fuel price tracking service.

Mandatory evacuations on Georgia’s Atlantic coast and some of South Carolina’s barrier islands were due to begin on Saturday. Virginia and Alabama were under states of emergency.

The governors of North and South Carolina warned residents to remain on guard even as the storm took a more westward track, saying their states still could experience severe weather, including heavy rain and flash flooding, early next week.

HURRICANE JOSE REACHES CATEGORY 4

As it roared in from the east, Irma ravaged small islands in the northeastern Caribbean, including Barbuda, St. Martin and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, flattening homes and hospitals and ripping down trees.

But even as they came to grips with the massive destruction, residents of the islands faced the threat of another major storm, Hurricane Jose.

Jose, expected to reach the northeastern Caribbean on Saturday, was an extremely dangerous storm nearing Category 5 status, with winds of up to 150 mph (240 kph), the NHC said on Friday.

Reuters

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