More than 1.4 million homes and businesses in south Florida were without power from Hurricane Irma on Sunday, the state's largest utility said, and repairs to its system will take weeks, threatening to leave millions in the dark.
Much of the state has not yet felt the full brunt of the storm as Irma barreled across the Florida Keys on Sunday morning and headed for the state's southwest coast with maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometers per hour, making it a Category 4 storm, the second worst on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
In all about 2 million people and businesses had lost power. At 11:45 a.m. EDT, about 1.4 million were without power while about 300,000 had power restored, FPL said. Large utilities that serve other parts of the state saw only seeing scattered outages.
"We will have to rebuild part of our system, particularly in the western part of the state. That restoration process will be measured in weeks, not days," said FPL spokesman Rob Gould at a news conference.
On Friday, the utility warned Irma could impact around 4.1 million customers, but that was before the storm track shifted away from the eastern side of the state where FPL's customers are concentrated in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Last October, Hurricane Matthew knocked out 1.2 million FPL customers as it skirted Florida's east coast without making landfall. Matthew did not come on shore and damage infrastructure, and it took the utility about two days to restore power.
FPL has warned customers to prepare for outages that could last weeks if Irma requires the utility to rebuild parts of its service territory.
FPL decided to shut only one of the two reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant on Saturday because the storm track shifted, and plans to leave both reactors at the St. Lucie plant in service because hurricane force winds are no longer expected to hit the sites. On Sunday, Gould said its nuclear plants were safe.
FPL had said on Friday it planned to shut both units at Turkey Point sometime on Saturday about 24 hours before hurricane force winds reached the plant.
St. Lucie is located on a barrier island on the state's east coast, about 120 miles (193 km) north of Miami, while Turkey Point is about 30 miles south of Miami.
FPL is a unit of Florida energy company NextEra Energy Inc.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
FORT MYERS, Florida - Hurricane Irma turned its menacing sight toward the Florida Keys on Saturday as it completed a destructive march along Cuba's northern coast and set off an 11th hour scramble for safety by Americans who may have ignored warnings to evacuate.
Irma, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to rip through Florida's southern archipelago on Sunday morning. It will make landfall on the Florida peninsula somewhere west of Miami and then head up the state's west coast, by Tampa, forecasters said.
Irma, which has killed at least 22 people in the Caribbean, was likely to inflict billions of dollars in damage in the third largest US state by population.
On Florida's west coast, Charley Ball said he expected a storm surge to engulf the entire island of Sanibel, an affluent community where he lives and operates a painting company.
"Just left the island and said goodbye to everything I own," the 62-year-old Ball said.
The storm could bring winds in excess of 130 mph (209 kph) and a storm surge up to 15 feet (4.6 meters), which is expected to trigger flooding.
Irma, located about 115 miles (185 km) southeast of Key West on Saturday afternoon, was a Category 5 storm, the highest ranking possible, when it crashed into Cuba during the morning. It gradually weakened to a Category 3 storm as it bumped along the island's northern coastline, flooding streets and sending waves crashing over sea walls.
Maximum sustained winds stayed at around 125 mph (201 kph), the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Irma is expected to regain strength as it steams over warm waters south of Florida, according to the NHC. It was likely to regain Category 4 status before striking Florida, said NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen.
The wide reach of Irma's deadly winds and its size, more than its numerical ranking, has rattled veteran hurricane watchers. It could rival any storm in Florida's history, Governor Rick Scott said.
Irma will dump 10 inches to 20 inches (25 cm to 51 cm) of rain over Florida and southeast Georgia from Saturday through Monday, the National Weather Service said, a fraction of what Hurricane Harvey dropped on Texas and Louisiana last month.
But unlike with Harvey, dangerous winds will barely abate once Irma makes landfall on Sunday morning.
A long line of people in Estero, Florida lined up to enter an arena that officials converted into an evacuation shelter, one of hundreds that have opened up across the state.
Andrea Prather, a singer from the Gulf Coast city of Fort Myers, said she was confident that she would stay safe on the 25th floor of her high-rise building.
She closely followed reports about the storm's path as it headed toward her town.
"When it made that turn, that's when I had that anxiety pit in my stomach. I was like, 'OK this is not good,'" she said.
In Cuba, the destruction along the north central coast was similar to that seen on other Caribbean islands over the last week as Irma plowed into Ciego de Avila province.
In the storm's aftermath, people walked through ankle-deep water in Caibarien, a Cuban fishing town where streets were flooded and covered in seaweed. Elsewhere, winds toppled trees and utility polls or ripped apart roofs.
"It was powerful, water rose to about one meter high," said Risle Echemendia, 28, in Caibarien as he swept muddy water out of his front door. "This was the strongest storm Caibarien ever had. It will take a while to recover from this, at least a few years."
It was the first time the eye of a Category 5 storm had made landfall in Cuba since 1932, state media said, and the island's Communist government ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people, with most sheltering with family and friends.
THIRD OF FLORIDA
Officials in Florida have ordered a total of 6.3 million people, or about a third of the state's population, to evacuate, creating massive traffic jams on highways and bringing huge crowds to shelters.
In Palm Beach, President Donald Trump's waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate was under evacuation order. Trump and his cabinet were at Camp David in Maryland, receiving updates on the storm.
Irma was already whipping south Florida with winds on Saturday, and the governor said thousands of people were without power.
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.
The window for people in evacuation zones to flee was drawing to a close on Saturday, officials said, warning that gas stations would soon be without fuel and bridges would be closed in some areas.
"You can't play chicken with this thing or try to outrun the storm," US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said at a news conference.
Rubio acknowledged some people had fled their homes only to arrive in areas expected to be in the storm's path, but he advised people in that situation to hunker down.
That was the case for Chris Cardona, 54, and his wife Laurie, who left their mobile home near Miami on Thursday to seek refuge with friends near Tampa.
"Not only did we go west, but so did Irma. She's tracking us, that feisty minx," Cardona said by phone.
Hurricane Irma could cause insurance losses of between $15 billion and $50 billion in the United States, catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide said.
Irma was set to hit the United States two weeks after Hurricane Harvey struck Texas as a Category 4 storm, killing about 60 people and causing property damage estimated at up to $180 billion in Texas and Louisiana.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump spoke on Friday with French
President Emmanuel Macron to extend his condolences on the devastation
to the French territories of St. Barthelemy and St. Martin due to
Hurricane Irma, and to offer U.S. support to the French government, the
White House said in a statement.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Monster Hurricane Irma hammered the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Wednesday as it packed a potentially catastrophic mix of pounding winds and rain and surging surf that was expected to make landfall in Florida over the weekend.
Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland in as many weeks, but its precise trajectory remained uncertain. Hurricane Harvey killed more than 60 people and caused as much as $180 billion in damage after hitting Texas late last month.
The eye of Irma, a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 miles per hour (295 km per hour), was bearing down on the Virgin Islands after passing over the half-French, half-Dutch island of St. Martin, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said. Category 5 is its highest category.
Its trajectory indicated Irma, which the NHC said was the strongest Atlantic storm on record, would skirt most of the Caribbean as it moves west-northwest.
Karel van Oosterom, the Netherlands ambassador to the United Nations, said Irma hit the Dutch islands of Saba and Sint Eustasius before overrunning St. Martin.
"First information indicates that a lot of damage has been done, but communication is still extremely difficult," he said at a U.N. meeting.
Irma began lashing Puerto Rico with rain at mid-morning. Governor Ricardo Rossello told residents to stay inside as the storm bore down on the island. “There is no reason to be in the street,” Rossello told a midday press conference.
Many businesses in San Juan, the island's capital, were closed and many buildings were covered with storm shutters. Occasional shoppers were out making final purchases of water, ice and food to prepare for what could be several days without power.
ROOFS BLOWN OFF
After Irma battered the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, emergency officials reported three injuries and minimal damage, with some roofs blown off. Prime Minister Gaston Browne said flights would resume from the airport Wednesday afternoon.
Much of the Leeward Islands were under a hurricane watch, as well as the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas, the NHC said.
In Paris, the French government said it had delivered water and food to two overseas territories, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, and that emergency response teams would be sent once the storm had passed.
Power was knocked out on both islands, according to prefecture officials on Guadeloupe. At least four buildings were damaged and low-lying regions had been flooded, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.
The U.N. World Food Program prepared to provide emergency aid to Haiti if it was hit by Irma. The country was ravaged by a 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew last year.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he and aides were monitoring Irma's progress. "But it looks like it could be something that will be not good. Believe me, not good," he told reporters in the White House.
Florida Governor Rick Scott said Irma could be more devastating than Hurricane Andrew, which struck the state in 1992, especially with a storm surge that could reach 10 feet (3 m).
Residents of the Florida Keys, a resort archipelago at the state's southern tip, were ordered to leave by Wednesday evening. Residents of low-lying areas in densely populated Miami-Dade County were urged to move to higher ground.
"We can expect additional evacuations as this storm continues to come near our state," Scott said at a news conference in the Keys.
He said 7,000 National Guard troops would report for duty on Friday, ahead of the storm's expected arrival.
Irma ranked as one of the five most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in the last 80 years and the strongest Atlantic storm recorded by the NHC outside the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
Trump approved emergency declarations for Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, mobilizing federal disaster relief efforts.
With Irma's looming arrival, the Miami Dolphins' home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, scheduled for Sunday, was postponed until Nov. 19, the National Football League said.
(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Jeff Mason, Ian Simpson and Susan Heavey in Washington, Tom Miles in Geneva and Richard Lough in Paris; Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Catherine Evans and Jeffrey Benkoe)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
