Hurricane Irma Live Updates: ‘Leave Now,’ Florida Governor Warns

Hurricane Irma pounded the Bahamas before making landfall Friday night in the northern part of Cuba as it cycled toward Florida. It is expected to hit there late Saturday with wind speeds powerful enough to snap trees and power poles and tear the roofs off buildings. And Gov. Rick Scott said the lower half of Florida could face life threatening storm surge as early as Saturday morning.

Irma, which was making landfall on the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba as a Category 5 storm with 160-mile-per-hour winds, had already caused flooding in Cuba’s northeast on Friday as it continued to move along the nation’s northern coastline, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In the Caribbean, where more than 20 people were killed, residents in Barbuda and St. Martin, islands that suffered excessive damage from Irma, wearily prepared for Hurricane Jose, the Category 4 storm that could hit those islands within the next two days.

In Florida, officials estimated that 5.6 million residents have been ordered to evacuate. They repeatedly urged Floridians not to underestimate the power of Irma. Governor Scott has said it would be “way bigger than Andrew,” referring to the 1992 storm that was the most destructive hurricane to hit the state.

“If you have been ordered to evacuate, you need to leave now,” he said at a news conference Friday evening. “Not tonight, not in an hour, now.”

Brock Long, the FEMA administrator, cautioned that people from Alabama to North Carolina should be monitoring the storm and making preparations.

On Friday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama issued a full state of emergency in an effort to better prepare the state for Irma. Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina also announced that he would order the mandatory evacuation of several islands — including the popular resort island Hilton Head — beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Here’s the latest:

• The National Hurricane Center said Irma remained “extremely dangerous,” and the Florida Keys were at risk of “life-threatening inundation.” Check out our maps tracking the storm.

• At least 20 people have died because of the storm in the Caribbean.

• In Florida, a 57-year old man died on Thursday after he fell off a ladder while trying to install storm shutters at a house in Broward County, the Davie Police Department said on Friday.

• Another storm, Hurricane Katia, was about 120 miles off Tampico, on Mexico’s eastern coast on Friday afternoon, packing winds of 75 m.p.h., the Hurricane Center said. The Category 1 hurricane was making landfall north of Tecolutla, Mexico, as of 11 p.m. Friday.

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Irma hits the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas

Irma lashed the southern Bahamas on Friday with intense winds and rain, leaving a trail of downed trees and power lines, damaged roofs and scattered debris.

Mayaguana and Inagua were among the first Bahamian islands to feel the impact. “It was very loud, you could hear the debris flying around crashing into buildings,” said Marcus Sands, an assistant superintendent with the police in Abraham’s Bay, Mayaguana’s main settlement.

The eye of the storm was expected to move just north of Cuba and the central Bahamas for the rest of Friday and Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Irma was predicted to dump 10 to 15 inches of rain on northern Cuba, with some areas seeing as much as 20 inches. The storm passed Baracoa, a town near Cuba’s eastern tip, on Friday morning, but wrought less havoc there than was expected. Cuban state media reported winds of about 90 m.p.h. and said waves towered over the city’s breakwater, causing localized flooding.

In the Turks and Caicos, Virginia Clerveaux, the director of Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies, said officials were assessing the effects, which included torn-off roofs, electricity outages and widespread flooding.

Irma is among the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean and one of the five most forceful storms to hit the Atlantic basin in 82 years, according to the National Hurricane Center. It had been a Category 5 storm, but at 5 a.m. Eastern the center downgraded it based on the lower intensity of sustained winds.

Florida and the southeastern U.S. hunker down

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At a news conference on Friday morning, Governor Scott cautioned that “we will quickly run out of good weather to evacuate.” He asked gas stations to stay open as long as possible, pledging that employees would have police escorts home, and asked other private business owners to “please be compassionate with your employees as they prepare for this storm.”

“This storm is wider than our entire state and is expected to cause major and life-threatening impacts from coast to coast,” he said.

A storm-surge warning was in effect across much of South Florida, where the hurricane was expected to reach on Sunday morning, including the Keys. Voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders were in place in Miami-Dade County, the Keys and portions of numerous other counties. “Today is the day to do the right thing for your family and get inland to safety,” Governor Scott said.

Eric Silagy, the chief executive officer of Florida Power and Light Co. said in a news conference that expected outages from the hurricane could affect 4.1 million customers, which is about 9 million people. “We are going to see a lot of debris that is going to be flying through the air,” he said.

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Airlines and airports raced to get flights off the ground on Friday. “Florida is extremely busy right now as general aviation flights escape the storm,” said Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for Flightradar24, which tracks flights in real time. “While this isn’t unprecedented, it is quite rare.”

In Miami Beach, workers prepared for the coming storm by boarding up windows on Friday morning on many of the iconic Art Deco hotels.

A mandatory evacuation was to begin on Saturday on Georgia’s Atlantic Coast, Gov. Nathan Deal said. The Georgia Ports Authority said the ports of Savannah, the fourth-largest container port in the United States, and Brunswick would be closed starting Saturday.

Caribbean islands are bracing for Jose

The island of Barbuda — where nearly all buildings were reduced “to rubble,” according to Prime Minister Gaston Browne — braced for new hardship, in the form of Hurricane Jose. The storm charged toward the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda and neighboring islands. Antigua and Barbuda’s attorney general and minister of public safety, Steadroy Benjamin, issued a mandatory evacuation order for Barbuda, meaning every citizen will be transported to Antigua.

Jose is expected to make landfall on Saturday, bringing winds of up to 155 m.p.h. to the islands, threatening those whose homes were lost or damaged by the earlier storm. The toll in the Caribbean from Irma already stands at 20: nine in the French Caribbean, four in the United States Virgin Islands, three in Puerto Rico, two on the Dutch side of St. Martin, one in Barbuda and one in Anguilla.

The islands of St. Martin, St. Barthélemy and Anguilla, which were battered by Irma, were also under a hurricane watch for Jose. John McKendrick, the attorney general of Anguilla, said on Thursday that the island had suffered “huge devastation” from the first storm. Darrell Gumbs, a constable in the Royal Anguilla Police Force, was still answering phones on Friday at his police station, despite the fact that the building’s roof had been blown off.

Residents were using the time between the two storms to clean up as much as possible, “so we don’t have debris flying around,” Mr. Gumbs said.

Up to 90 percent of the homes on the island were damaged, fallen trees blocked many roads, cellphone service was interrupted and electrical service was cut. In addition, the ports and the airport remained closed because of damage. St. Martin was dealing with a similar level of devastation.

Other parts of the Caribbean that braced for Irma’s wrath were bypassed by the worst of the storm, including the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola. Damage from flooding and power outages was reported on the Haitian side. Three people were killed in Puerto Rico, and around two-thirds of the population lost electricity, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said.

The storm also lashed a U.S. territory

Residents of the United States Virgin Islands said Friday that the island of St. Thomas, which is the center of the chain’s cruise ship industry, had suffered significant damage from Hurricane Irma. At least four people died in the United States territory, the islands’ governor said.

The extent of the destruction in much of the territory, including on St. John, is not yet known, because of the lack of phone service and electricity.

The roofs of the government’s headquarters building on St. Thomas and the island’s only hospital were blown off, and a large number of homes on the island were destroyed or damaged, said Holland Redfield, a former Virgin Islands senator who now works as a radio talk show host.

Tom Price, the United States health and human services secretary, said Friday that the hospital was closing and its patients were being transported to facilities on other islands. (See what the damage was like in this part of the Caribbean in photos and videos from the area and from firsthand accounts.)

Irma, which also ripped apart buildings and boats on the island of St. John, left the island of St. Croix relatively unscathed, said Mr. Redfield, who rode out the storm on St. Croix.

The hurricane, which also damaged police and fire stations, comes amid a crippling financial crisis on the Virgin Islands that left the government unable to pay for basic operations earlier this year.

Kenneth E. Mapp, the islands’ governor, was scheduled to travel to St. Thomas on Friday to survey damage. On Thursday he cautioned residents: “Recovery is not going to happen in just weeks or a few months given the level of the devastation.”

‘How can you abandon your stuff?’ one Miami resident asked

Otto Campos, 54, leaned out of his front window of his home in the Miami suburb of Palmetto Bay on Friday morning to talk about his last-minute decision to leave. He and his wife, Kristine, decided to evacuate when they saw how high the storm surge could be.

“I don’t know if it’s any safer,” Mr. Campos said of the Palm Beach apartment the couple planned to drive to with their three dogs. “But it’s higher.”

“It’s scary,” she said, looking up at the palm trees towering over their roof.

Nearby, about half a block from the shore of Biscayne Bay, Alberto Valdes would not leave. Despite protests from his neighbors — including a broadcast reporter who covered the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew — he said nothing would persuade him to leave his one-story home before Irma hits.

“How can you abandon your stuff?” Mr. Valdes, a 63-year-old New Jersey native, asked, gesturing to the home he has owned for 20 years. “You work so hard to have it, and then walk away? It’s not an easy decision.”

He ticked off his preparations: the door barricaded behind aluminum shutters, a generator, food, water, the furniture brought inside and tied down. If the storm surge gets too close, Mr. Valdes said he would drive away in his truck or hop in an inflatable raft, but said he thought that would be unlikely.