3 killed as Irma slams into Florida

■ Irma knocks out electricity to 1 million homes ■ Parts of Miami under water ■ Storm eyes Gulf Coast

Waves crash over a seawall at the mouth of the Miami river in Florida as Hurricane Irma passes by on Sunday. Three people in Florida, including a sheriff’s deputy, were killed in car crashes as the hurricane slammed in with high winds and lashing rain.

Miami, Sept. 10: Three people in Florida, including a sheriff’s deputy, have been killed in car crashes as Hurricane Irma closed in with high winds and lashing rain, officials said on Sunday.

Deputy Julie Bridges, 42, died in a head-on collision in Hardee County, east of Sarasota, early Sunday, sheriff Arnold Lanier told AFP. “She had been working in a shelter all night, and ran home to get some supplies” when the crash occurred at 6:45 am, he said. The roads were “wet and windy”, he added noting that Ms Bridges was the mother of a young son and had worked for the sheriff ’s department for 13 years.

The other driver, a corrections officer on his way to work in a private vehicle, was also killed, Mr Lanier said.

The third fatality was a man who died on Saturday near Key West when his truck slammed into a tree, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The truck was carrying a generator, ABC News reported. The exact cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Irma slammed into the Florida Keys on Sunday, lashing the tropical island chain with fearsome wind gusts as it churns towards the US state’s west coast, where a mass exodus has turned cities into ghost towns.

Six million people, one third of the state’s population, have been ordered to evacuate the path of the monster hurricane, which was upgraded to a Category 4 storm as it passed over the Keys packing maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. In homes, hotels and school gyms, a die-hard minority who defied orders to flee were hunkered down as Irma’s roaring winds ripped boats from their moorings, flattened palm trees and tore down power lines across the island chain popular for fishing and scuba diving.

‘There’s absolutely no way anybody can be outside right now,” Maggy Howes, a first responder on Key Haven, said on CNN. “You would not be able to stand or walk.”

One of the most powerful hurricanes ever to slam storm-prone Florida, Irma is threatening dangerous storm surges up to 15 feet, enough to cover a house as it collides with the state after sowing devastation through the Caribbean.

A shelter of last resort set up in the Middle Keys city of Marathon was reported to be without power or running water, and surrounded by surging waters. “Everything is underwater, I mean everything,” Larry Kahn, an editor for local news website FlKeysNews.com, reported from inside.

The cities of Naples, Fort Myers and the densely populated peninsulas of Tampa Bay on Florida’s west coast are next in the crosshairs of the historic storm, churning north at nine miles per hour and already lashing the mainland with dangerous winds.

Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn said, “We are about to get punched in the face by this storm.” Irma smacked the Keys 57 years to the day that Hurricane Donna hit the same area in 1960, destroying nearly 75 per cent of the island chain’s buildings.