More than 1.6 million people had orders on Tuesday to evacuate their residences in Florida (United States) before the imminent arrival of Hurricane Idalia, which, according to meteorologists, will make landfall this Wednesday morning in the northwest of the state with category three winds on the Saffir-Simpson scale (out of a maximum of 5).
About 310 kilometers southwest of the city of Tampa, Idalia continued to strengthen on Tuesday night and, according to the bulletin of the National Hurricane Center of the United States (NHC for its acronym in English), in category 2 it reached maximum sustained winds of 155 kilometers per hour. It is estimated that this Wednesday it will reach winds of 178 kilometers per hour.
Idalia’s eye the third hurricane (after Don and Franklin) of the current Atlantic cyclone season, it made landfall on Monday at Cape San Antonio, the western end of Cuba, and continued to hit several western provinces of the island with intense downpours on Tuesday.
The most affected province in Cuba was Pinar del Río, that it has not yet fully recovered from the serious devastation wreaked on its territory barely a year ago by Hurricane Ian.
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Over there, Idalia left some 186,000 homes without electricity service (60 percent of the province), and in the Artemisa province harmed 117,434 customers (80 percent). In Havana, for its part, there were 47,980 affected consumers and another 4,326 on the Isle of Youth.
Preliminary official reports had not reported the death or disappearance of any person in the impacted areas.
“Now we have to work urgently: electrical service, communications, agriculture (…) harvesting to distribute as much as possible” of food, said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, when chairing a meeting to coordinate the work of recovery.
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High alert in Florida
In the United States, meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center warned on Tuesday that the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, close to 31 ºC, are expected to turn Idalia into a “dangerous high-intensity hurricane before making landfall this Wednesday,” while warning that “life-threatening” coastal flooding is expected from 10- to 16-foot storm surge, torrential rains, and strong winds in Florida.
“Very few people can survive being in the path of a major storm surge, and this storm will be deadly if we don’t get out of harm’s way and take it seriously,” said the head of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency ( Fema), Deanne Criswell.
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The emergency situation is such that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 46 of Florida’s 67 counties and urged residents of coastal towns and flood-prone areas to heed mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders.
“You have to leave now. If you don’t, tomorrow morning will be too unpleasant, and if you decide to stay, first responders won’t be able to locate you until after the hurricane,” he insisted.
From the state emergency operations center, DeSantis warned that the greatest concern for the authorities is the storm surge, which in parts of the northwest coast of Florida, the so-called Big Bend, can raise sea level up to about 15 feet (4 .5 meters) above its usual level.
In addition to temporary shelters, there are hotels in the area through which Idalia is expected to pass that are prepared to receive evacuees.
Likewise, DeSantis stressed that up to 30,000 workers are ready to proceed to restore power if the hurricane causes damage to poles and wiring.
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The imminent arrival of Idalia as a major hurricane also forced the closure of schools in 42 school districts, like 23 universities, and to deploy nearly 1,100 National Guard troops, who have boats and other equipment for rescue work.
The international airports of Tampa and St. Pete-Clearwater remained closed this Tuesday, while the public railway company Amtrak was forced to cancel or modify more than a dozen routes in Florida.
Idalia comes almost a year after Hurricane Ian hit the west coast of Florida as a devastating Category 4 storm and left nearly 150 people dead. Ian also caused storm surge and strong winds that toppled bridges, flattened buildings and caused more than $100 billion worth of damage in the state.
It is expected that after the arrival of Idalia on the Florida coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the cyclone will continue on land over the north of this state, southeast Georgia and near the coast of South Carolina. In the latter state, the state governor, Roy Cooper, has already declared a state of emergency pending heavy rains and landslides between Wednesday and Thursday.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and EFE
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