SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — As Hurricane Irma, considered the most powerful Atlantic storm ever recorded, aimed for Puerto Rico and other islands throughout the Caribbean, residents scrambled Tuesday to rush out of flood zones, stock up on the last available water, food and gas, shutter their homes and brace for what is now, and could remain, a mammoth Category 5 hurricane.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — As Hurricane Irma, considered the most powerful Atlantic storm ever recorded, aimed for Puerto Rico and other islands throughout the Caribbean, residents scrambled Tuesday to rush out of flood zones, stock up on the last available water, food and gas, shutter their homes and brace for what is now, and could remain, a mammoth Category 5 hurricane.
“We have to prepare for an event that we have never experienced here,” said Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico at a news conference, as he went on to call the hurricane’s arrival imminent and its potential catastrophic.
Packing winds of up to 185 mph, Irma threatened havoc and widespread destruction across Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of 3.4 million people, the nearby island of Hispaniola (home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, among others. Cuba is also threatened. The storm is expected to rake or sideswipe Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday.
Hurricane Irma is the strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center and Bryan Norcross, the hurricane specialist at The Weather Channel. The hurricane center said Irma had winds of up to 185 mph as it approached the Leeward Islands. There have been other storms with comparable winds in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.
With Harvey’s destruction still fresh on people’s minds, Florida hustled into action. Gov. Rick Scott activated the state National Guard to help with hurricane preparations and suspended tolls. The governor declared a state of emergency on Monday and spoke with Trump, who offered “the full resources of the federal government,” Scott wrote on Twitter.
Most of the latest projections have Irma slamming into the state by Sunday, although it’s unclear where it may make landfall.
But it is Puerto Rico and the nearby northern Leeward islands that are expected to face Irma’s potentially catastrophic winds first. It has been nearly a century since Puerto Rico was hit by a Category 5 storm, Norcross said.
© 2017 The New York Times Company