25 percent of Florida Keys homes are gone, FEMA says
With 25 percent of the homes in the Florida Keys feared destroyed, emergency workers Tuesday rushed to find Hurricane Irma's victims - dead or alive - and deliver food and water to the stricken island chain.
As crews labored to repair the lone highway connecting the Keys, residents of some of the islands closest to Florida's mainland were allowed to return and get their first look at the devastation.
"It's going to be pretty hard for those coming home," said Petrona Hernandez, whose concrete home on Plantation Key with 35-foot walls was unscathed, unlike others a few blocks away. "It's going to be devastating to them."
But because of disrupted phone service and other damage, the full extent of the destruction was still a question mark, more than two days after Irma roared into the Keys with 130 mph (209 kph) winds.
Elsewhere in Florida, life inched closer to normal, with some flights again taking off, many curfews lifted and major theme parks reopening. Cruise ships that extended their voyages and rode out the storm at sea began returning to port with thousands of passengers.
The number of people without electricity in the steamy late-summer heat dropped to 9.5 million - just under half of Florida's population. Utility officials warned it could take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored. About 110,000 people remained in shelters across Florida.
The number of deaths blamed on Irma in Florida climbed to 13, in addition to four in South Carolina and two in Georgia. At least 37 people were killed in the Caribbean.
"We've got a lot of work to do, but everybody's going to come together," Florida Gov. Rick Scott said. "We're going to get this state rebuilt."
In hard-hit Naples, on Florida's southwest coast, more than 300 people stood outside a Publix grocery store in the morning, waiting for it to open.
A manager came to the store's sliding door with occasional progress reports. Once he said workers were throwing out produce that had gone bad, another time that they were trying to get the cash registers working.
One man complained loudly that the line had too many gaps. Others shook their heads in frustration at word of another delay.
At the front of the line after a more than two-hour wait, Phill Chirchirillo, 57, said days without electricity and other basics were beginning to wear on people.
"At first it's like, 'We're safe, thank God.' Now they're testy," he said. "The order of the day is to keep people calm."
Irma's rainy remnants, meanwhile, pushed through Alabama and Mississippi after drenching Georgia. Flash-flood watches and warnings were issued around the Southeast.
While nearly all of Florida was engulfed by the 400-mile-wide storm, the Keys - home to about 70,000 people - appeared to be the hardest hit. Drinking water and power were cut off, all three of the islands' hospitals were closed, and the supply of gasoline was extremely limited.
Search-and-rescue teams made their way into the more distant reaches of the Keys, and an aircraft carrier was positioned off Key West to help. Officials said it was not known how many people ignored evacuation orders and stayed behind in the Keys.
Monroe County began setting up shelters and food-and-water distribution points for Irma's victims in the Keys.
Crews also worked to repair two washed-out, 300-foot (90-meter) sections of U.S. 1, the highway that runs through the Keys, and check the safety of the 42 bridges linking the islands.
Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long said that preliminary estimates suggested that 25 percent of the homes in the Keys were destroyed and 65 percent sustained major damage.
"Basically every house in the Keys was impacted," he said.
In Islamorada, a trailer park was devastated, the homes ripped apart as if by a giant claw. A sewage-like stench hung over the place.
Debris was scattered everywhere, including refrigerators, washers and dryers, a 25-foot (8-meter) fishing boat and a Jacuzzi. Homes were torn open to give a glimpse of their contents, including a bedroom with a small Christmas tree decorated with starfish.
One man and his family came to check on a weekend home and found it destroyed. The sight was too much to bear. The man told his family to get back in the car, and they drove off toward Miami.
In Key Largo, Lisa Storey and her husband said they had yet to be contacted by the power company or by city, county or state officials. As she spoke to a reporter, a helicopter passed overhead.
"That's a beautiful sound, a rescue sound," she said.
Authorities stopped people and checked for documentation such as proof of residency or business ownership before allowing them back into the Upper Keys, including Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada.
The Lower Keys - including the chain's most distant and most populous island, Key West, with 27,000 people - were still off-limits, with a roadblock in place where the highway was washed out.
In Lower Matecumbe Key, just south of Islamorada, 57-year-old Donald Garner checked on his houseboat, which had only minor damage. Nearby, three other houseboats were partially sunk. Garner had tied his to mangroves.
"That's the only way to make it," said Garner, who works for a shrimp company.
While the Keys are studded with mansions and beachfront resorts, about 13 percent of the people live in poverty and could face big obstacles as the cleanup begins.
"People who bag your groceries when you're on vacation, the bus drivers, hotel cleaners, cooks and dishwashers, they're already living beyond paycheck to paycheck," said Stephanie Kaple, who runs an organization that helps the homeless in the Keys.
Corey Smith, a UPS driver who rode out the hurricane in Key Largo, said it was a relief that many buildings on the island escaped major damage. But he said conditions were still not good, with branches blocking roads and supermarkets closed.
"They're shoving people back to a place with no resources," he said by telephone. "It's just going to get crazy pretty quick."
Europe leaders view devastated islands as locals struggle
PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten (AP) - France's president and the Dutch king visited Caribbean territories on Tuesday that were hammered by Hurricane Irma, trying to quell accusations by residents that European governments were unprepared, slow to react and sometimes even racist in their responses to the devastation.
The Dutch Red Cross said there were still more than 200 people listed as missing on St. Maarten, but with communications still extremely spotty a week after the storm hit it wasn't immediately clear how many were simply without cell service and unable to let friends and family know they had survived. Over 90 percent of buildings on the Dutch side of the island were damaged, and 1/3 of the buildings were destroyed, the agency said, adding they would use drones to better assess the damage.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people across the island shared by Dutch St. Maarten and French St. Martin were trying to rebuild the lives they had before the hurricane hit.
Dominga Tejera picked her way around fallen palm trees rotting in mud as she returned home after a nine-hour workday as a hospital janitor on the Caribbean island that only a week ago had seemed like paradise.
She collapsed into a small plastic chair that has served as a makeshift bed since Irma ripped the roof off her home as it pummeled St. Martin as a Category 5 storm.
"It's sad when you come home to this," she said as she began to cry. "You try to stay strong in public, but once inside, you break."
French President Emmanuel Macron flew into Guadeloupe and was heading to hard-hit St. Martin to meet with residents. His plane brought water, food, tons of medicine and emergency equipment, doctors and recovery experts to an island demolished by the power of the Category 5 hurricane.
Macron said 11 people were killed in St. Martin, while another four people died on the Dutch side of the island, bringing the death toll in the Caribbean to at least 35.
At a news conference in the Pointe-a-Pitre airport before departing for St. Martin, Macron said the government's "top priority" was to help island residents return to normal life.
But many on the island were struggling to maintain a semblance of the normality they had before Irma.
"There's no food here. There's no water here," said 70-year-old Germania Perez.
Adding to the stress of lack of food and shelter were reports of widespread looting by armed gangs.
As night fell on Monday, residents hurried inside, fearful of robbers roaming the streets and of the handful of men walking around yanking chains tied to aggressive dogs.
"We can't sleep in peace because of the thieves," said 48-year-old Yovanny Roque.
Hundreds of tourists were still trying to leave the island, with dozens lining up outside St. Maarten's Princess Juliana Airport, where only five large letters of its name remained.
One passenger abandoned a Yorkshire terrier named Oliver, tied to a barricade with airport security tape, as some people were told they could not bring pets. The tiny dog was later rescued by a local resident who took pity on him.
Across the island, cars lay tossed upside down at 90-degree angles and on top of other cars. Large boats leaned sideways on dry land.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who arrived on Monday, said the scenes of devastation he witnessed on St. Maarten in the hurricane's aftermath were the worst he had ever seen.
"I've never experienced anything like this before and I've seen a lot of natural disasters in my life. I've seen a lot of war zones in my life, but I've never seen anything like this," Willem-Alexander said on the Dutch national network NOS.
Still, he said he was encouraged to see residents already working together to rebuild the shattered capital, Philipsburg. He was scheduled to fly later Tuesday to the nearby Dutch islands of Saba and St. Eustatius, which also were hit by Irma, but suffered less damage than St. Maarten.
Among the dead were 10 killed in Cuba - the island's worst hurricane death toll since 2005, when 16 died in Hurricane Dennis.
Havana was in recovery mode, with crews cleaning away thousands of fallen trees and electricity restored to a handful of neighborhoods.
To the east, in the Leeward Islands known as the playground for the rich and famous, governments came under criticism for failing to respond quickly to the hurricane, which flattened many towns and turned lush, green hills to brown stubble.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended his government's response to what he called an "unprecedented catastrophe" and promised to increase funding for the relief effort. Britain sent a navy ship and almost 500 troops to the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos islands.