Irma blasts through Florida Keys, turning its deadly winds toward mainland

Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET Sunday

After leaving a path of destruction through parts of the Caribbean, Hurricane Irma’s eye moved through the lower Florida Keys on Sunday morning. By midday, the National Hurricane Center reported the deadly Category 4 storm had begun to swing away from the Keys — and toward Florida’s mainland.

Irma was expected to hit the state’s southwest coast or skirt it closely later Sunday, trundling its 130-mph winds toward northern Florida, where the NHC believes it will then move inland. But first, Irma — now moving north at about 9 mph — has Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa in its sights.

Already, though, the storm’s force could be felt across the state on Sunday morning: More than 1.5 million homes and businesses had lost power and upwards of 100,000 people had taken refuge in shelters by 11 a.m. ET. Residents across the state, from the southernmost tip of the peninsula to areas near Florida’s northern border, face what the NHC calls a “life threatening” storm surge.

Gov. Rick Scott warned that it would be storm surge, more so than winds or power outages, that would likely be the most dangerous aspect of the storm over the coming days.

“Ten to 15 feet above ground level — even 5 or 6 feet — it’s hard to believe anybody will survive that,” Scott told NBC on Sunday morning. “It comes into your house; it flushes in, it flushes out. And that’s going to be very difficult to survive.”

A beaten path through the Florida Keys

Irma plowed into the lower Florida Keys early Sunday morning, its eye passing just 20 miles east of Key West.

By 3:50 a.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service in Key West recorded water levels of 2 feet above normal, with Scott tweeting that the Keys “are getting gusts of hurricane force winds now- more expected. Stay indoors and be safe.”

And just after 6 a.m., the National Weather Service in Key West made the urgency of the situation quite clear, issuing an “extreme wind warning” and writing: “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation!”

“The problem is that the Keys are a very low-lying chain of islands, so there’s nowhere that’s truly safe from a devastating storm surge, plus there’s only one road out of the Keys,” Nancy Klingener of member station WLRN reported from Key West.

She was in a three-story concrete building that she said was shaking a bit from wind gusts Sunday morning.

By around 11 a.m. Sunday, the Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained gusts of 130 mph was moving north at 9 mph, putting Florida’s western coast in its projected path, including Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa.

Hurricane Irma's forecast path. (Graphic courtesy National Hurricane Center)
Hurricane Irma’s forecast path. (Graphic courtesy National Hurricane Center)

And she was not alone in the area.

For some who remained on the Keys, evacuation was no longer an option on Sunday morning. “STAY INSIDE & HUNKER DOWN,” the weather service warned those residents, advising them to move away from windows and cover themselves in pillows and blankets to protect from debris.

A Twitter user posted video that purported to show the scene in Key West:

Bracing for impact on the mainland

As Florida awaits the storm’s imminent arrival, residents have already been feeling its effects. Florida Power & Light says Irma has left roughly 1.7 million of its customers without power, and the state’s Division of Emergency Management says its more than 609 shelters are filling with an evacuee population stretching into the six digits.

For others, like a Tampa neighbor of WUSF’s Tyler Kline, preparations meant pulling wood from their own fence just to board up their windows.

All told, more than 6.5 million Floridians have been ordered to evacuate — more than a quarter of the state’s population and one of the biggest evacuations in Florida history. Many heeded that request — but were stuck on clogged highways. Some gas stations in South Florida ran out of fuel and couldn’t keep up with demand.

As Gov. Scott noted, some of the greatest concern rests with the expected storm surge. The National Hurricane Center warned it could reach as high as 10 to 15 feet in the coastal area spanning from Cape Sable and Captiva on Florida’s southwestern coast. Most of the coast of the entire state was under storm surge warnings, as well.

“You could have it where the second story of some buildings is going to get inundated,” NHC meteorologist David Zelinsky told NPR’s Windsor Johnston. He added that storm surge flooding is responsible for more than half of the deaths during hurricanes.

The NHC predicted the storm would weaken — it had at one point clocked wind speeds of 185 mph — though it would “remain a powerful hurricane as it moves through the Florida Keys and … near the west coast of Florida.”

On Sunday morning, the NHC predicted Irma would move “near or along the west coast of Florida” through Monday morning, before hitting parts of the Florida Panhandle and southwest Georgia later Monday. Maps show it later touching parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.

For now, though, residents in western Florida are scrambling to prepare. Residents in Miami had been expecting the brunt of the storm, but the storm’s expected path then shifted to the northwest, taking many people by surprise.

“Last night there was panic because Tampa was a place people were escaping to, a place they thought would be a refuge,” reports NPR’s Leila Fadel. “And then this monster of a storm shifted and headed west and the city and the evacuees who came here are grappling with the fact that they might be smack-dab in the middle of this terrifying weather.”

Fadel described “dazed couples” at a city hotel and staff looking “exhausted, answering panicked customers, constant phone calls and thinking about securing their own homes and families.”

Almost half the gas stations in Tampa were out of gas, leading to confrontations as other supplies ran low. “People here fight for like everything,” Joanna Ruisanchez, who works at a Shell gas station there, told NPR’s Abby Wendle. “They’ll come and like, curse us out.”

The National Weather Service warned of tornadoes as well, especially east of the hurricane’s path:

President Trump has been keeping abreast of the storm Sunday, speaking with the governors of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to White House Secretary Sarah Sanders.

“He’s spoken numerous times to Gov. Scott and Sen. Rubio of Florida over the last week,” Sanders said, “as has Gen. Kelly. The Chief of Staff also spoke to Sen. Nelson of Florida this morning.”

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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