Officials across the northeastern Caribbean canceled airline flights, shuttered schools and urged people to hunker down indoors as Hurricane Irma barreled toward the region as a powerful Category 4 storm expected to strengthen more before nearing land late yesterday.
States of emergency were declared in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and all of Florida while people on various Caribbean islands boarded up homes and rushed to find last-minute supplies, forming long lines outside supermarkets and gas stations.
Irma’s maximum sustained winds increased to near 240kph early yesterday, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Authorities said that the storm could dump up to 25cm of rain, cause landslides and dangerous flash floods and generate waves of up to 7m.
“This is not an opportunity to go outside and try to have fun with a hurricane,” US Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth Mapp said. “It’s not time to get on a surfboard.”
The storm’s center was expected to move near or over the northern Leeward Islands late yesterday and early today, the hurricane center said.
Residents on the US east coast were urged to monitor the storm’s progress in case it should turn northward toward Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas.
“This hurricane has the potential to be a major event for the east coast. It also has the potential to significantly strain FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and other governmental resources occurring so quickly on the heels of [Hurricane] Harvey,” AccuWeather chief operating officer Evan Myers said in a statement.
In the Caribbean, hurricane warnings were issued for 12 island groups, including Antigua, where the governor urged people to evacuate the tiny island of Anegada if they could ahead of the storm.
Vivian Wheatley, proprietor of the Anegada Reef Hotel, planned to stay behind.
She said she would stay in one of the hotel rooms and take advantage of the generator since there were no guests.
“We know it’s a very powerful [storm], and we know it’s going to be very close,” she said. “Let’s hope for the best.”
People in the US territory of Puerto Rico braced for electricity outages after the director of the island’s power company predicted that storm damage could leave some areas without electricity for four to six months.
However, “some areas will have power [back] in less than a week,” Ricardo Ramos told radio station Notiuno 630 AM.
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