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Wednesday 13 september 2017

Europe leaders view devastated islands FEMA estimates 25 percent of

Continued from Front the 27-year-old said. panied by doctors and Florida Keys homes are gone
It was thanks to that ra- teams of experts who were
The organization said 90 dio station that she found to help lead the recovery By JASON DEAREN
MARTHA MENDOZA
percent of buildings on the out about a flight for all effort. Associated Press
Dutch territory were dam- Latin Americans stuck in “The situation is very criti- LOWER MATECUMBE KEY, Fla. (AP) — Search-and-
aged and a third destroyed St. Maarten. She rushed to cal,” he told the residents. rescue teams made their way into the Florida Keys’
as Irma roared across the the airport with her broth- “What I want to do is to farthest reaches Tuesday, while authorities rushed to
island it shares with French er, who was evacuating have a very fast recovery, repair the lone highway connecting the islands and
St. Martin. back to Colombia. As she so we are trying to fix the deliver aid to Hurricane Irma’s victims. Federal officials
Yogesh Bodha, a 37-year- dropped him off, Eche- situation regarding health, estimated one-quarter of all homes in the Keys were
old jewelry store employee, varría saw a Yorkshire terrier education, access to wa- destroyed.
said there was no response tied to a metal barricade, ter, energy and telecom.” Two days after Irma roared into the island chain with
from European officials abandoned by a passen- He said he hoped changes 130 mph winds, residents were allowed to return to the
for two days, and that he ger fleeing the island and would be noticeable by parts of the Keys closest to Florida’s mainland.
hasn’t seen many changes told they couldn’t bring week’s end. But the full extent of the death and destruction there
since Dutch authorities ar- pets on the plane. Macron said 11 people remained a question mark because cellphone service
rived on St. Maarten. Echevarría scooped up were killed in St. Martin, was disrupted and some places were inaccessible.
“They should’ve been more the dog named Oliver and while another four people “It’s going to be pretty hard for those coming home,”
organized than they were,” brought him home to meet died on the Dutch side
said Petrona Hernandez, whose concrete home on
Plantation Key with 35-foot walls was unscathed, unlike
others a few blocks away. “It’s going to be devastat-
ing to them.”
Elsewhere in Florida, life inched closer to normal, with
some flights again taking off, many curfews lifted and
major theme parks reopening. Cruise ships that ex-
tended their voyages and rode out the storm at sea
began returning to port with thousands of passengers.
The number of people without electricity in the steamy
late-summer heat dropped to around 10 million — half
of Florida’s population. Utility officials warned it could
take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored.
About 110,000 people remained in shelters across Flor-
ida.
The number of deaths blamed on Irma in Florida
climbed to 12, in addition to four in South Carolina and
two in Georgia. At least 37 people were killed in the
Caribbean.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but everybody’s go-
ing to come together,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said.
“We’re going to get this state rebuilt.”
In hard-hit Naples, on Florida’s southwest coast, more
than 300 people stood outside a Publix grocery store in
France’s President Emmanuel Macron walks with residents during his visit in the French Caribbean the morning, waiting for it to open.
islands of St. Martin , Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. Macron is in the French-Dutch island of St. Martin,
where 10 people were killed on the French side and four on the Dutch. A manager came to the store’s sliding door with oc-
(AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool) casional progress reports. Once he said workers were
he said. “We have not re- her three other dogs, in- of the island, bringing the throwing out produce that had gone bad, another
time that they were trying to get the cash registers
ceived any food or water. cluding one rescued from death toll in the Caribbean working.
They say it’s on its way. Let’s a neighbor’s property. The to at least 37. One man complained loudly that the line had too
see.” neighbor fled with her son At a news conference in many gaps. Others shook their heads in frustration at
For Liseth Echevarría, who after the hurricane de- the Pointe-a-Pitre airport word of another delay.
works as a bartender in St. stroyed their home. There before departing for St. At the front of the line after a more than two-hour wait,
Maarten, offering what- was nothing left of it other Martin, Macron said the Phill Chirchirillo, 57, said days without electricity and
ever she could to family, than jagged pieces of government’s “top priority” other basics were beginning to wear on people.
strangers and abandoned wood and a shower curtain was to help island residents “At first it’s like, ‘We’re safe, thank God.’ Now they’re
pets was helping her cope covered in colorful butter- return to normal life. testy,” he said. “The order of the day is to keep peo-
— and those around her flies tangled in a toppled Dutch King Willem-Alex- ple calm.” Irma’s rainy remnants, meanwhile, pushed
were doing the same. tree. Echevarría’s husband, ander, who arrived in St. through Alabama and Mississippi after drenching
The manager of a ma- Lex Kools, a 26-year-old civ- Maarten on Monday, said Georgia. Flash-flood watches and warnings were is-
rina next door threw over il engineer, jumps over the the scenes of devastation sued around the Southeast.
a hose so that Echevarría fence every day to feed he witnessed in the hurri- While nearly all of Florida was engulfed by the 400-mile-
and her husband could the other two dogs on the cane’s aftermath were the wide storm, the Keys — home to about 70,000 people
have a semblance of an property. worst he had ever seen. — appeared to be the hardest hit. Drinking water and
outdoor shower. He also “They were attacking each “I’ve never experienced power were cut off, all three of the islands’ hospitals
offered them a temporary other, they were so hun- anything like this before were closed, and the supply of gasoline was extremely
power connection from his gry,” he said. and I’ve seen a lot of natu- limited.
generator so they could French President Emman- ral disasters in my life. I’ve Officials said it was not known how many people ig-
charge phones and listen uel Macron flew into Gua- seen a lot of war zones nored evacuation orders to stay behind in the Keys.
to the sole radio station still deloupe on Tuesday be- in my life, but I’ve never Federal Emergency Management Agency adminis-
broadcasting. fore heading to hard-hit seen anything like this,” trator Brock Long said that preliminary estimates sug-
“This is the only communi- St. Martin, where he met in Willem-Alexander said on gested that 25 percent of the homes in the Keys were
cation that St. Maarten has debris-littered streets with the Dutch national network
with the world right now,” residents. He was accom- NOS.q destroyed and 65 percent sustained major damage.q