Florida exodus as Irma closes in
DEADLY: 20.6 MILLION PEOPLE ‘SHOULD EVACUATE’
Massive hurricane has ripped through Caribbean leaving a trail of devastation. Miami
Florida’s highways were jammed last night with families fleeing their homes as Hurricane Irma honed in on the Sunshine State after reducing island resorts to rubble and killing at least 17 people across the Caribbean.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic snaked north out of the peninsula, with mattresses, gas cans, mattresses and kayaks strapped to car roofs, as residents heeded increasingly insistent warnings to get out and Florida’s governor said all of the state’s 20.6 million inhabitants should be prepared to evacuate.
“Hurricane Irma is of epic proportion, perhaps bigger than we have ever seen,” US President Donald Trump warned on Twitter. “Be safe and get out.”
Roaring across the Caribbean, the monster storm laid waste to tiny islands like Saint Barthelemy and Saint Martin, where 60% of homes were wrecked and scenes of looting have broken out, before slamming into the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Irma was downgraded overnight from a Category Five storm to a still-deadly Category Four, and continued to pack extremely dangerous winds of 240 km/h.
Forecasters warned of storm surges of up to almost eight meters above normal tide levels, as the hurricane bears down for a direct hit on southern Florida, where the mass exodus is being complicated by gridlock and fuel shortages. –