FORT MYERS, FLA.—Hurricane Irma roared through the Florida Keys on Sunday with punishing 130 mph (209 km/h) winds and began pushing its way north, knocking out power to more than 1.5 million people across the state and collapsing a construction crane over the Miami skyline.The nearly 650-kilometre-wide storm is expected to make a slow, ruinous march up Florida’s west coast, straight toward the heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg area by Monday morning.Streets emptied across the bottom half of the Florida peninsula, and some 127,000 people huddled in shelters.“Pray, pray for everybody in Florida,” Gov. Rick Scott said on “Fox News Sunday.”Flooding, roof damage and floating appliances and furniture were reported in the low-lying Keys, but with the storm still hitting around midday, the full extent of Irma’s wrath was not clear.There were no immediate confirmed reports of any deaths from the storm.While the projected track showed Irma raking the state’s Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the entire state — including the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people — was in extreme peril from the monstrously wide storm.Nearly 7 million people in the Southeast were warned to get out of harm’s way, including 6.4 million in Florida alone.About 30,000 people heeded orders to evacuate the Keys as the storm closed in, but an untold number refused to leave, in part because to many storm-hardened residents, staying behind in the face of danger is a point of pride.John Huston, who was riding out the storm at his Key Largo home, was already seeing flooding in his yard before the arrival of high tide. “Small boats floating down the street next to furniture and refrigerators. Very noisy,” he said by text message. “Shingles are coming off.”In downtown Miami, one of two dozen construction cranes looming over the skyline collapsed atop a high-rise in Irma’s winds. The ...
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