5.6 M Floridians Ordered To Evacuate As Hurricane Irma Closes In
Florida has ordered 5.6 million people to evacuate as massive Hurricane Irma menaces the southeastern US state, according to its Division of Emergency Management.
Irma regained strength as a Category 5 storm late Friday (local time) as it made landfall on the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba, and is now swirling about 275 miles (440 kilometres) away from Miami packing maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour.
Irma is expected to strike the Florida Keys late Saturday and Sunday before moving inland, according to the National Hurricane Center, and many residents have joined a mass exodus amid increasingly dire warnings to leave.
Warning that Irma would be worse than Hurricane Andrew — which killed 65 people in 1992 — Florida’s governor Rick Scott had said all of the state’s 20.6 million inhabitants should be prepared to evacuate.
