FORT MYERS/MIAMI: Hurricane Irma knocked out power to more than 2.6 million homes and businesses in Florida on Sunday, threatening millions more as it crept up the state’s west coast, local electric utilities said, adding that full restoration of service could take weeks.
So far, the brunt of the storm has affected Florida Power & Light’s customers in the states’ southern and eastern sections, and its own operations were not immune, either.
“We are not subject to any special treatment from Hurricane Irma. We just experienced a power outage at our command centre. We do have backup generation,” FPL spokesman Rob Gould said Sunday.
FPL, the biggest power company in Florida, said more than 2.3 million of its customers were without power by 4:30 PM EDT (2030 GMT), mostly in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. More than 200,000 had electricity restored, mostly by automated devices.
The company’s system will need to be rebuilt, particularly in the western part of the state, Gould said. “That restoration process will be measured in weeks, not days.”
Large utilities that serve other parts of the state, including units of Duke Energy Corp, Southern Co, and Emera Inc, were seeing their outage figures grow as the storm pushed north.
The utilities had thousands of workers, some from as far away as California, ready to help restore power once Irma’s high winds pass their service areas. About 17,000 were assisting FPL, nearly 8,000 at Duke, and more than 1,300 at Emera.
There is also spent nuclear fuel at Duke’s Crystal River plant, about 145 kilometres (90 miles) north of Tampa. The plant — on Irma’s current forecast track — stopped operating in 2009 and was retired in 2013.
In a worst-case scenario, the spent fuel could release radiation if exposed to the air, but a federal nuclear official said that was extremely unlikely.
“That fuel is so cold, relatively speaking, it would take weeks before there would be any concern,” said Scott Burnell of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
‘Life-threatening situation’
Irma lost some strength as it pounded southern Florida on Sunday afternoon, but forecasts warned it would remain a powerful storm as it flooded Miami streets and knocked out power to about 2 million homes and businesses.
All of southern Florida was feeling the effects of the storm creeping towards the shore, with at least one man killed, a woman forced to deliver her own baby, apartment towers swaying in high winds, and trees uprooted.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the storm had maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometres per hour (120 mph), dropping it to a Category 3 — the midpoint of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
Tampa and Hurricane Bays saw extraordinarily low tides, with sea life visible and boats grounded, though forecasters warned the storm would soon drive those waters back in with storm surges of up to 15 feet (4.6 metres) along the state’s western Gulf Coast.
Small whitecapped waves could be seen in flooded streets between Miami office towers.
Irma had been one of the most powerful hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic, killing 28 people in the Caribbean and pummeling Cuba with 36-foot (11 metres) waves on Sunday.
Its core was located about 30 miles (48 km) south of Naples by 2 PM ET (11 PM PST) and was expected to move along or over Florida’s western coast through the afternoon and evening.
Some 6.5 million people — about a third of the state’s population — had been ordered to evacuate southern Florida.
“This is a life-threatening situation,” Governor Rick Scott told a press conference.
Tornadoes were also spotted through the region.
Irma is expected to cause billions of dollars in damage to the third-most-populous US state, a major tourism hub with an economy that generates about 5 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP).
About 2 million Florida homes and businesses had lost power, according to Florida Power & Light and other utilities.
The storm killed 24 as it raged through the Caribbean. It has already claimed at least one life in Florida, a man found dead in his pickup truck, which had crashed into a tree in high winds.
Miami buildings sway, streets flooded
The storm winds downed at least one construction crane and shook tall buildings in Miami, which was about 160 kilometres (100 miles) from Irma’s core.
Deme Lomas — who owns Miami restaurant Niu Kitchen — said he saw a crane torn apart by winds and dangling from the top of a building.
“We feel the building swaying all the time,” Lomas said in a phone interview from his 35th-floor apartment. “It’s like being on a ship.”
Waves poured over a Miami seawall, flooding streets waist-deep in places around Brickell Avenue — that runs a couple of blocks from the waterfront through the financial district and past consulates.
One woman in Miami’s Little Haiti neighbourhood delivered her own baby because emergency responders were not able to reach her, the city of Miami said on Twitter. The two are now at the hospital, it said.
On Marco Island, right in Irma’s path just south of Naples, 67-year-old Kathleen Turner and her husband were riding out the storm on the second floor of a friend’s condominium after failing to find a flight out. She feared for her canal-facing home.
“I’m feeling better than being in my house, but I’m worried about my home, about what’s going to happen,” Turner said.
Irma comes just days after Hurricane Harvey dumped record-setting rain in Texas, causing unprecedented flooding, killing at least 60 people and an estimated $180 billion in property damage. Almost three months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through November.
US President Donald Trump spoke to the governors of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee on Sunday and issued a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico, which was hit by the storm last week, the White House said.
