MIAMI – Authorities sent an aircraft carrier and other Navy ships to help with search-and-rescue operations in Florida Monday as a flyover of the hurricane-battered Keys yielded what the governor said were scenes of devastation.
“I just hope everyone survived,” Gov. Rick Scott said.
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.” Authorities also struggled to clear the highway connecting the string of islands to the mainland.
The Keys felt Irma’s full fury when the storm blew ashore as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday morning with 130 mph winds. How many people in the dangerously exposed, low-lying islands defied evacuation orders and stayed behind was unclear.
Steve Miccio secures a tree limb with a rope as he and others work to remove the tree from the roof of his Gulf Road home Tarpon Springs, Fla., Monday, Sept. 11, 2017. Miccio and his family were not home at the time when the tree fell. Hurricane Irma brought heavy wind and rain as it passed Tampa Bay. (Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times via AP)As Irma weakened into a tropical storm and finally left Florida on Monday after a run up the entire 400-mile length of the state, the full scale of its destruction was still unknown, in part because of cut-off communications and blocked roads.