Hurricane Irma has battered Florida with gusts of up to 145mph, flooded downtown Miami, brought dangerous storm surges to the west coast and cut off the Florida Keys
After millions were ordered to evacuate, those left behind hunkered down. But Marco Rubio, the senator for Florida, said in a television interview: “You can’t hide from the water. That’s our biggest fear.”
When it struck the Keys about 9am local time, Irma was a category 4 hurricane and close to the force of its rampage across the Caribbean, which flattened buildings and led to the deaths of at least 25 people.
In a midday briefing on Sunday in the state capital Tallahassee, the governor, Rick Scott, said south-western coastal areas could be hit by storm surges of 10ft-15ft (3-4.5 metres) above ground and breathtakingly fast waves as tall as a one-storey home. Tampa should expect surges as large as 5ft (1.5 metres), he said, while south-eastern parts of the state would have surges high enough to float cars or submerge a person.
The islands of the Florida Keys recorded 12in (30cm) of rain. All of south Florida could expect another 8-15in (20-38cm), Scott said. More than 3.3m homes and businesses in the state have lost power
In an interview with NBC, Scott said: “The most important thing is to pray for us.”
Four hundred miles wide, Irma initially moved at 8mph, slower than forecast, and lost strength as it raked the peninsula. the hurricane made landfall on Marco Island as a category 3 storm, after hours of blasting south Florida with stinging, near horizontal rain, and sudden tornadoes.
Early on Monday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded Irma to category 1. As of 2am EDT, the storm was centred about 25 miles north-east of Tampa and moving north-north-west at almost 15 mph.
The city has not been hit by a major storm since 1921, when its population was about 10,000. About 3 million people live in the greater Tampa area, which includes St Petersburg and Clearwater. On Sunday afternoon, large volumes of water were temporarily pushed out of Tampa Bay by winds, leaving an ominous plain behind
Irma leaves a trail of devastation in its wake, lashing islands in the Caribbean. The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson rejected criticism of the UK’s emergency preparations on the British Virgin Islands, one of the worst-hit places, where five people died
Britain’s response has been compared with other countries with territories in the Caribbean, such as the Netherlands and France. Pressure on the prime minister, Theresa May, could build after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, tweeted that he would visit the French territory of St Martin on Tuesday.
Johnson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I stress that this is a very big consular crisis, and I am confident that we are doing everything we possibly can to help British nationals. But you must understand that there are a million of them affected.”
He said 700 British troops were in the region, with UK police officers arriving too, and that the government would be providing assistance to affected areas “for the long term”.
“We were there as soon as the crisis broke,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense when a hurricane is impending to send in heavy aircraft or to send in ships that are not capable themselves of withstanding the storm.
“In fact, the French had to ask us for assistance later on, because we’d got the right sort of kit there.”
Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat and Labour’s Stephen Twigg, who chair the foreign affairs and development committees respectively, said on Friday that Britain’s response had an “apparent lack of forward-thinking”.
The premier of the BVI, Orlando Smith, said the situation was “critical” and called for the UK to provide economic support “over the long-term in order to return to normalcy”.
In St Petersburg, Florida, many refused to leave. With plywood extremely difficult to find and no gas available, many houses were not boarded up.
Further south, Naples, a city of about 20,000 people in a wider metropolitan area of more than 300,000, the tide rose by 5.5ft, according to recordings taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Rubio warned residents not to become complacent after the winds seemed to die down. “Storm surge doesn’t come until the storm passes,” he told CBS. Florida’s other senator, Bill Nelson, told CBS Irma would “take a wall of water into the bays and estuaries on the Gulf Coast of Florida”.
In his hometown of Miami, Rubio said Irma was “nasty, brutal”, though the city was not even in the eye of the storm.
“It is going to be exponentially worse everywhere up the west coast of Florida. So if you live in Naples, in Fort Myers, in Sarasota, in the Tampa Bay region, this storm has the potential to be that sort-of-worst-case scenario that meteorologists and emergency planners dread.”
Florida Power and Light said more than 17,000 workers were positioned to move in once the most dangerous weather passed, but officials warned that some areas could be without power for weeks.
Emergency services were suspended in Miami-Dade and Broward, with fire and police officials evaluating 911 calls on a case-by-case basis. In Broward, a county-wide curfew was in effect until 10am on Monday.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings in Florida’s four southernmost counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Collier. Funnel clouds were spotted over Fort Lauderdale beach and a tornado touchdown was reported in Oakland Park, to the west of the city.
Two giant cranes collapsed in downtown Miami, one leaving its boom dangling by metal cables. Fire chief Joseph Zahralban said conditions were too dangerous to send crews to secure the cranes.
Authorities repeated warnings to anyone not among the 7 million who had already evacuated. About 127,000 Floridians were in shelters.
Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Administration , told CNN: “You’re on your own until we can actually get in there and it’s safe … you put your life in your own hands by not evacuating.” On Fox News Sunday, he said: “Once this system passes through, it’s going to be a race to save lives and sustain lives.”
All 7,000 members of the Florida national guard were activated and 10,000 guardsmen from other states were on their way to help. President Donald Trump declared a major disaster in the state.
It has been estimated the storm will cost up to $300bn (£228bn) in cleanup and insurance claims, and also drive up US food prices because of Florida’s position as the second-largest produce grower in the country.
In the Caribbean, Hurricane Jose, a category 4 storm, shifted north and away from land, giving hope to the survivors of Irma.
