Hurricane Matthew batters Florida
Mass evacuations in 4 states
ORLANDO (Reuters) — Matthew, the first major hurricane threatening a direct hit on the United States in more than 10 years, lashed Florida yesterday with heavy rains and winds.
US President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency and ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal and local response efforts to Hurricane Matthew.
Although the hurricane was downgraded to a Category 3 storm as it approached the US mainland, winds gusts of up to 113 kph and heavy downpours were still reported across coastal communities in Florida, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
“We are just bracing and the winds are picking up,” Daytona Beach Mayor Derrick Henry told CNN early on Friday. “A great number of our residents have taken heed to our warnings and we are certainly concerned about those that have not.”
More than 140,000 Florida households were without power, according to Gov. Rick Scott. In West Palm Beach, once lit street lights and houses went dark and Interstate 95 was empty as the storm rolled through the community of 100,000 people.
Hurricane Matthew was carrying extremely dangerous winds of 195 kph after pounding the northwestern part of the Bahamas en route to Florida’s Atlantic coast earlier, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Matthew’s winds had dropped on Thursday night and into yesterday morning, downgrading it to a Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, where it could either plow inland or tear along the Atlantic coast through Friday night, the Miami-based center said.
The US National Weather Service said the storm could be the most powerful to strike northeast Florida in 118 years.
It was too soon to predict where Matthew might do the most damage in the United States, but the NHC’s hurricane warning extended up the Atlantic coast from southern Florida through Georgia and into South Carolina. More than 12 million people in the United States were under hurricane watches and warnings, according to the Weather Channel.
NASA and the US Air Force, which operate the nation’s primary space launch site at Cape Canaveral, have already taken steps to safeguard personnel and equipment.