Millions hunker down as hurricane Irma slams into Florida

Agencies
September 11, 2017

Florida, Sept 11: Hurricane Irma is giving Florida a coast-to-coast pummeling with winds up to 210km/h, swamping homes and boats, knocking out power to millions and toppling massive construction cranes.

The 640-kilometre-wide storm blew ashore Sunday morning in the mostly cleared-out Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane before eventually weakening to a Category 2 storm as it moved up the coast.

Forecasters said it could hit the heavily populated Tampa-St Petersburg area early on Monday.

"Pray, pray for everybody in Florida," Governor Rick Scott told US media on Sunday.

At least three people were reportedly killed in two separate vehicle accidents in Florida that took place as the stormed arrived. At least 25 people were killed during Irma's destructive trek across the Caribbean earlier this week. 

Storm surges

A storm surge of over three metres was recorded in the Florida Keys, and forecasters warned some places on the mainland could get up to 4.5 metres of water.

"This is a life-threatening situation," Scott told a press conference.

Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from Naples in south Florida, said that while "the worst of the storm had passed over the city, the next big thing people were worrying about was the storm surge".

She added that a surge of up to 4.5 metres could put the entire downtown area of Naples at risk.

Some 645km north of the Keys, people in the Tampa-St Petersburg area braced for the onslaught on Sunday night.

The Tampa Bay area, with a population of about three million, has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane since 1921.

Al Jazeera's Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Tampa, said those in the city are very concerned about storm surges as well.

"The real dangers here are three-fold," she said.

"People are worried about the winds of 150km/h, which are predicted in Tampa, as well as the rainfall, and the highest concern is the storm surges."

Entire state 'at risk'

While Irma raked the state's Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the entire state - including the Miami metropolitan area of six million people - was in danger because of the sheer size of the storm.

In Miami, a woman who went into labour, was guided through delivery by phone when authorities could not reach her in high winds and street flooding. Firefighters later took her to the hospital.

Two of the two dozen construction cranes looming over the city's skyline collapsed in the wind. No injuries were reported. City officials said it would have taken about two weeks to move the massive equipment.

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from Miami, said there was a point during the afternoon on Sunday that the rain and wind were so strong that visibility was reduced to less than 10 metres.

"It was so heavy that you really couldn't see much further than your hand," Fisher said.

"The good news is that many people have moved out of their homes, they have gone to the shelters that have been provided - more than 375 of them across the state - and they will stay there, probably until Tuesday or Wednesday when the water starts to recede and things get back to normal."

Power outages

Curfews were imposed in Miami, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and much of the rest of South Florida, and some arrests of violators were reported. 

Florida Power and Light said that more than three million customers were without power by Sunday evening and more outages were expected as the storm moved further north.

The utility company added that full restoration of service could take weeks.

Nearly seven million people in the southeastern part of the US were warned to evacuate, including 6.4 million in Florida alone.

After leaving Florida, a weakened Irma is expected to push into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and beyond. A tropical storm warning was issued for the first time ever in Atlanta, Georgia, which is some 320km from the sea.

President Donald Trump approved a disaster declaration for Florida, opening the way for federal aid.

Florida's governor also activated all 7,000 members of the Florida National Guard, and 10,000 guardsmen from elsewhere were being deployed.

Irma at one time was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic, a Category 5 with a peak wind speed of 300km/h, and its approach set off alarm in Florida.

For days, forecasters had warned that Irma was taking dead aim at the Miami area and the rest of the state's Atlantic coast.

But then Irma made a more pronounced westward shift that put a bull's-eye on the Tampa area - the result of what meteorologists said was an atmospheric tug-of-war between weather systems that nudged Irma and determined when it made its crucial right turn into Florida.

Before making its way to Florida, Irma blasted the Caribbean, ripping roofs off houses, collapsing buildings and flooding hundreds of kilometres of Cuba's coastline after it had already devastated several other islands in the Caribbean.

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News Network
November 7,2024

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The Israeli regime has killed at least 40 people during new airstrikes against eastern Lebanese areas, besides targeting the country’s capital Beirut with fresh acts of aggression.

Lebanon’s health ministry announced the fatalities on Wednesday, saying 53 other people had also been wounded during the aerial attacks that targeted the country’s Bekaa Valley, including the city of Baalbek.

In early Thursday, the regime was also reported to have attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs, including a site adjacent to Rafiq Hariri International Airport.

The attacks came after the regime issued short-notice evacuation orders apparently directed at the residents of the areas, claiming that the areas contained facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement.

Tel Aviv has been using similar claims on countless occasions since last October, when it markedly intensified its deadly acts of aggression against Lebanon, in order to try to justify the escalation. Hezbollah has, however, invariably refuted the claims.

Also on Wednesday, the United Nations warned in its most recent flash report on the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli atrocities targeting Lebanon that the aggression had “reached a critical point.”

The attacks have claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, which was “58 percent more than the 1,900 fatalities” that were caused by the regime’s 2006 war against Lebanon, the report said.

“Additionally, an estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced, both within Lebanon and into neighboring countries, 33 percent more than the number of people displaced in 2006,” it added.

Women comprised the majority of those who had been rendered homeless within Lebanon as a result of the Israeli attacks, the report noted.

It also regretted that the Israeli attacks had featured 78 assaults on healthcare facilities across the country that had claimed the lives of 130 health workers and injured 111 others.

In response to the aggression, Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.

The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.

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News Network
November 10,2024

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has warned that disciplinary action will be taken against those officials who change the land mutation records and serve eviction notices to farmers under the Waqf Act.

In a letter, the Revenue Department Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar Kataria reminded all regional commissioners and deputy commissioners in the districts that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently had a meeting following complaints about certain land properties being made in favour of the Karnataka Board of Waqfs.

In the meeting it was decided that all the directions issued previously by any government office or authority to change the mutation records has been withdrawn, the letter said.

It added that all the notices served in the past have also been withdrawn and no action should be taken against the farmers who are cultivating on the said land.

On the directions of the chief minister, the previous letters and the latest reminders served on November 7 to the farmers and land owners have been withdraw, the letter said.

"The officials who served reminder-2 despite the chief minister's direction will face appropriate disciplinary action," Kataria said in his letter.

He said he has been instructed to strictly implement the chief minister's direction.

The fresh direction was issued in poll-bound Karnataka, where bypolls to three crucial assembly segments are due on November 13.

Some farmers in Honwad village in Vijayapura in north Karnataka had alleged last month that they were served eviction notices as the Waqf Board claimed rights over it.

Subsequently, complaints started in pouring in from some other parts of the state.

BJP leader Tejasvi Surya on October 25 alleged that Karnataka Waqf Minister B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan directed the deputy commissioners and revenue officials to register lands in favour of the Waqf Board within 15 days, which resulted in confusion.

On Surya's request, the Chairman of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, Jagdambika Pal visited Karnataka on November 7 and met farmers in Hubballi, Vijayapura and Belagavi districts who had alleged that their lands were marked as Waqf properties.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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