Dozens of personnel from the Environmental Protection Agency worked to secure some of the nation’s most contaminated toxic waste sites as Hurricane Irma bore down on Florida. The agency said its employees evacuated personnel, secured equipment and safeguarded hazardous materials in anticipation of storm surges and heavy rains.
With the window closing fast for anyone wanting to escape, Irma hurtled toward Florida with 125 mph winds Saturday on a shifting course that threatened the first direct hit on the Tampa area from a major hurricane in nearly a century. That represented a significant turn in the forecast, which for days had made it look instead as if the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people was going to get slammed head-on by the Big One.
Hurricane Irma’s relentless advance on Florida narrowed the window for residents to get to safety, with the latest forecasts shifting landfall southwest of the heavily populated Miami metro area. The enormous storm regained Category 5 status late Friday as winds hit 160 mph (260 kph). Forecasters expect the storm to be near the Florida Keys on Sunday morning and approach the state’s southwest coast by that afternoon. In one of the country’s largest evacuations, about 5.6 million people in Florida…
Catastrophic, life-threatening, extremely dangerous. Scary? Forecasters hope so. The National Weather Service are using as fearful words as they can, on purpose, to warn people about Hurricane Irma and shock them into action, just as they did last month for Hurricane Harvey. “Words like catastrophic, get out, life-threatening, hopefully it will sink in,” said National Hurricane Center spokesman and meteorologist Dennis Feltgen. The weather office on the Florida Keys may have done him one better. “(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)THIS IS AS REAL AS…
For hundreds of Northern retirees, paradise looks like the pastel-colored mobile homes just off A1A, the highway that runs the length of Florida’s eastern coast. The Atlantic Ocean is just across the road, and the beach is flat and wide and firm – perfect for morning strolls and so different from their former homes in places like New York, New Jersey and Wisconsin. In the evenings, the residents sometimes drive their golf carts to the bank of the Halifax River…
Florida’s major theme parks are planning to close as Hurricane Irma approaches the state. Officials at Walt Disney World in Orlando announced Friday afternoon that its parks will close on Saturday and remain closed through Monday.
Florida State and Florida canceled their Saturday home football games Thursday because of Hurricane Irma. No. 10 Florida State was set to play Louisiana-Monroe, and No. 22 Florida was scheduled to face Northern Colorado.
