Irma has already left a deadly trail across the Caribbean, now threatened by another hurricane, Jose ...
Katia, Irma and Jose: three hurricanes are formed a few days apart in the Atlantic. - NOAA / SIPA
As Florida awaited its arrival with anguish, Hurricane Irma, reverted to Category 5, reached Cuba late Friday night after leaving a deadly trail across the Caribbean now threatened by another hurricane, Jose.
Irma, downgraded to category 4 on Friday morning, finally regained vigor in the night from Friday to Saturday, returning to level 5, the highest, at the time of hitting Cuba. After crashing at least 19 in the Caribbean since Wednesday, the hurricane reached Cuba by the Camaguey archipelago at 0300 GMT (5 hours in Paris) on Saturday, with gusts of 260 km / h, US National Hurricane Center (NHC). Before Irma arrived, torrential rains had already struck the island, where a million people were evacuated as a precaution.
In the tourist areas on the northern coast of Cuba, more than 10,000 foreign tourists and several thousand Cuban holidaymakers were transported to a safe place, and the capital Havana was on alert. Gigantic depression bigger than Florida, the Irma monster is expected to arrive on the American "Sunshine State" on Sunday morning, via the Keys archipelago, before coming to hit Miami with expected winds at 240 km / h. Then it will be Georgia and South Carolina.
Local authorities warned that "no place will be safe" in the Keys archipelago, a popular tourist destination in southern Florida. "It is not certain that it is possible to survive for anyone who is still in the Keys," warned Ed Rappoport, director of the NHC.
"I will not find anything again"
Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for at least one million residents of Florida, but more likely to flee north. On Friday, hundreds of thousands of motorists clustered on the two highways along the coast of the peninsula. In Miami, in the Sunnyside district, where mostly low-income Cubans live, those who have not yet evacuated or sought shelter in a shelter were trying to protect their homes.
"The roofs will fly anyway, these mobile homes are rotten," ironically, resigned, Pedro Marti, a 49-year-old Cuban plumber, fixing plywood boards. A protection that he himself considered "ridiculous": "I will not find anything when I return." The atmosphere in the streets of Miami Beach, an art deco resort usually filled with tourists, was lunar, with many shops closed. Irma could hit the spot where hedonism usually plays, causing devastating floods.
"I hope (the hurricane) will arrive from the south and stay there, otherwise the storm will be more intense," said David Wallack, 67, the boss of the Mango's nightclub.
An aircraft carrier using
Hurricane Andrew, which had rolled most of southern Florida in 1992, "was a category 5 hurricane but very, very small, compact compared to what we are seeing with Irma," recalled the boss of the United States Agency for Emergency Management (Fema), Brock Long. In the United States, the state of emergency already in force in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina has been extended to Virginia further north.
The US Navy announced Friday that it was sending a USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier from Norfolk, Virginia to two amphibious landing a destroyer. These four ships carrying 300 men and 27 helicopters will provide medical, maritime, logistical and security assistance if necessary.
Hurricane Irma, unprecedented intensity on the Atlantic, has already caused very heavy damage in the West Indies. According to the various governments concerned, there were 19 deaths (10 in the French islands of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, 4 in the US Virgin Islands, 2 in Puerto Rico, 2 in the Dutch part of Saint-Martin and one in Barbuda). After the ravages of Irma, it is hurricane Jose, which strengthened Friday in category 4, with winds of 240 km / h, which threatens these islands. Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy were again placed in cyclonic red alert.
"The worst is going to take time"
"We hardly had time to realize Irma that Jose arrives," confided residents of the French island of "Saint-Barth", where relief is struggling to organize. On the island of St. Martin, the extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Irma is obvious: the hills usually covered with lush tropical vegetation are now brown, as if burnt.
In the town of Marigot, the chief town of the French part of Saint-Martin, it was chaos: roofs were punctured, broken, scrap metal, scrap metal and vegetation strewn on the ground. "The water went up to the second floor, there was no more water, more electricity, more information, just noise, noise, a deafening noise," explained Gary Epstein, a tourist American.
A third hurricane, Katia, demoted in category 1, reached the Atlantic coast of Mexico, a country already bruised by a terrible earthquake that left 61 dead on Friday on its Pacific front. "The worst is going to take a long time to arrive," predicted Ricardo Pardiñas, a 35-year-old tourist guide from Tecolutla, a town of 8,000 inhabitants near Irma's point of impact on the coast. For here, it is especially the river and a possible flood that is feared.