As part of rescue efforts and to achieve a thorough search, the U.S. Navy has dispatched the aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln” and two other ships to the Florida Keys to help with search-and-rescue operations after Hurricane Irma flooded the region, FOX reports.
Gov. Rick Scott, after flying over the affected areas called it scenes of devastation and said, “I just hope everyone survived”.
He said, “boats were cast ashore, water, sewers and electricity were knocked out, and I don’t think I saw one trailer park where almost everything wasn’t overturned.” It has thus made it a herculean task for authorities to clear the single highway connecting the string of islands to the mainland.
The Keys were dented by the full wrath of Irma, as the hurricane made its landfall in the area on Sunday morning as a Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph winds.
A WFOR reporter, tweeting on Monday morning wrote, “it’s hard to describe” the lower Florida Keys, but it could be best described as a “war zone.”
About two-thirds of Florida’s population, remained without power across the state, and according to officials, it could take weeks for electricity to be restored to everyone. Over 180,000 people took safety in shelters in the Sunshine State.
Against expectations, Irma’s adventure through the Tampa-St. Petersburg area on Monday appeared modest. Gov Scott confirmed that damage on the southwest coast, including in Naples and Fort Myers, was not as bad as feared, though, he said “there is devastation” in the Keys and that it was too early to put a dollar estimate on the damage.
He said, “It’s horrible, what we saw, I know for our entire state, especially the Keys, it’s going to be a long road.”
He said the Navy dispatched the Abraham Lincoln, the USS Iwo Jima and USS New York.
As Irma finally left Florida on Monday after a run up the entire 400-mile length of the state, it triggered severe flooding around Jacksonville in the state’s northeastern corner Monday night, and weakened to a tropical depression near Columbus, Georgia and South Carolina as it moved inland with winds at 50 mph, causing flooding and power outages.
Irma has birthed Six deaths in Florida, three in Georgia and one in South Carolina, and at least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.
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