Irma knocks out power to 7M homes, businesses

Locally, at the state and federal government.

When it is finally safe for emergency officials to fan out across the peninsula, they will find out whether that is enough.

Irma lashed the area with maximum sustained winds near 130 miles per hour (215 kph) and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was expected to remain a powerful storm as it moved through the Florida Keys and near the state’s west coast.

The category 3 Hurricane Irma has already left three people in Florida dead and over 3 million households without power. Some 6.3 million people were instructed to evacuate in Florida alone, according to The Telegraph.

Parts of the Midlands and counties closest to the Georgia border – Aiken, Edgefield and Barnwell – are set to receive more than a total 5 inches of rainfall.

Local newscasters spent all weekend chasing the storm, but in the age of social media the most harrowing footage of Hurricane Irma comes from individuals in the region.

Most of the damage includes flooding, structural, nonfunctioning stoplights, downed trees and power lines. FEMA chief Brock Long said some places won’t have electricity for weeks.

However, it continues to weaken and is expected to become a tropical depression by Tuesday morning.

A listing boat drifts near the Florida Keys. “So everybody’s got to be patient as we work through this”, he said. “Once this system passes through it’s going to be a race to save lives and sustain lives”.

At least 24 people were killed by Irma in the Caribbean, Reuters reported Sunday.

“We watched in horror as the water quickly rose around our house topping off at about two feet during high tide today”.

After Naples, the storm is moving north to Tampa and St. Petersburg area, and then further north to Orlando.

Monroe County Commissioner Heather Carruthers said on Monday that people had been killed in the Keys, which have almost 80,000 permanent residents, but she did not have a count on how many.

Gov. Rick Scott, who spent the days before the storm hit beseeching the islands’ residents to evacuate, said Monday that he is flying down to the Keys to survey the damage.

Elsewhere, the city of Charlotte reported mass zones of flooding, with the entire downtown area inundated.

“Florida will get through this”, he said.