Florida officials have warned that Irma could be worse than Hurricane Andrew, the Category 5 storm that devastated South Florida 25 years ago. Hurricane Irma’s westward shift toward the Gulf Coast brought some sense of relief to cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale but heightened fears of catastrophic flooding on Florida’s west coast. She drove to her mother’s house in Sun City Center, a retirement community near Tampa on the Gulf Coast, only to find herself more squarely in Irma’s path. Be patient and understand that we may have a lot of damage to address.”Fleeing South Florida Densely populated areas of South Florida’s coast were under mandatory evacuation orders ahead of Hurricane Irma’s projected landfall. 2 million633,000Mandatoryevacuationzones acrossFloridaAt Pompano Beach High School, north of Fort Lauderdale, evacuees were crowded into a cafeteria converted into a Broward County shelter on Saturday afternoon.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 09, 2017 14:15 UTC