Hurricane Irma has claimed five more lives, patients at a Florida nursing home that lost electricity during the storm that brought widespread devastation to the region.
Residents of the hard-hit Florida Keys returned to inspect damaged homes and businesses that were largely without electricity and communications in the wake of the deadly storm.
Categorised as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record when it rampaged through the Caribbean, Irma killed more than 60 people, officials said.
At least 23 people died in Florida and nearby states, and destruction was widespread in the Keys, where Irma made initial US landfall on Sunday and became the second major hurricane to strike the mainland this season.
Two elderly residents were found dead at the Rehabilitation Center of Hollywood Hills and three later died at a hospital, Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told reporters on Wednesday.
Some residents were evacuated from the facility early Sunday morning and some reportedly awoke sick at the centre, which had been without air conditioning for a few days.
‘I have nothing’
Authorities barred re-entry to most of the Keys to allow more time to restore electricity and medical service and bring water, food and fuel. Some 10,000 Keys residents stayed put when the storm hit and may ultimately need to be evacuated, according to officials.
"I don't have a house. I don't have a job. I have nothing," said Mercedes Lopez, (50), whose family fled north from the Keys town of Marathon on Friday and rode out the storm at an Orlando hotel, only to learn their home was destroyed, along with the filling station where Lopez worked.
“We came here, leaving everything at home, and we go back to nothing,” Ms Lopez said. Four families from Marathon including hers planned to venture back on Wednesday to salvage what they could.
The Keys were largely evacuated by the time Irma barreled ashore as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of up to 215 km/h.
Initial damage assessments found that 25 per cent of homes there were destroyed and 65 per cent suffered major damage, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long said.
Mr Long warned that life on the Keys would remain tough.
“There are numerous bridges of support that have to be inspected before we can put commodities down the roadway to support citizens,” Mr Long told CNN. “Communication is lacking in many portions of Monroe County. Citizens are frustrated about not being able to get the support they need right now. That’s exactly why we asked them to leave.”
A resort island chain that stretches from the tip of the state into the Gulf of Mexico, the Keys are connected by a bridges and causeways along a narrow route of nearly 160 km.
Total devastation
Irma wreaked total devastation in parts of the Caribbean, where most of the deaths occurred.
The storm destroyed about one-third of the buildings on the Dutch-governed portion of the eastern Caribbean island of St Martin, the Dutch Red Cross said on Tuesday.
People who fled their homes in hard-hit islands including St Martin and the US Virgin Islands that were all but cut off from the world for days arrived in San Juan late Tuesday.
Michael Benson (65), of St John in the US Virgin Islands, said he lost everything.
“My house, my business, both my vehicles, everything is gone,” said Mr Benson, who was stopping in San Juan before continuing to Boston to seek refuge with his wife’s brother.
“But we have life. We rode out that horrible storm in a shower that I had reinforced after Hurricane Marilyn,” he added. “I told the man (who installed the shower), I told him, ‘If the hurricane takes the rest of my house, I want this shower sticking up out of that slab like the last tooth in the mouth of a bum. And sure enough that’s what’s left.”
Across Florida and nearby states, some five million homes and businesses were without power on Wednesday, down from a peak of 7.8 million on Monday.
Irma hit the United States about two weeks after Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston, killing about 60 and causing some $180 billion in damage, mostly from flooding.
Reuters