Hurricane Irma: Broward County curfew goes into effect at 4 p.m. Saturday

[Desperado]

Broward County over stepping there bounds again. No reason for a a countywide curfew at 4 p.m. Common sense will should tell people when to seek shelter not a government

Broward County is imposing a countywide curfew at 4 p.m. Saturday. No one should be on the streets after that time, officials said.

Mayor Barbara Sharief said people will not be arrested. The curfew is being put in place because tropical storm-force winds are expected to arrive after 2 p.m. today and people should not be out.
Hurricane Irma: Broward County curfew goes into effect at 4 p.m. Saturday

 

[waltky]

U.S. military responds to Irma recovery...

Air Force Flies 300 Doctors to Florida for Irma Recovery
10 Sep 2017 | Four C-17 Globemaster III aircraft flew out just before midnight on Saturday to transport approximately 300 healthcare personnel in preparation for Hurricane Irma disaster response operations -- even as parts of Florida were still evacuating before the Category 4 storm hit.

At the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the medical staff -- physicians, nurses, veterinary staff, paramedics, fatality management professionals, and experienced command and control staff -- flew from Washington Dulles International Airport to Florida’s Orlando International Airport, Air Mobility Command officials said in a release. The doctors and staff are part of the National Disaster Medical System, “which provides response capabilities to augment existing healthcare systems in affected areas,” AMC spokesman Maj.Korry Leverett said in the release.

Healthcare professionals travel to Orlando, Fla. on board an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, in response to a government request to assist with Hurricane Irma disaster response operations.​

The C-17s -- from Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware and March Air Reserve Base, California -- were pre-positioned by Air Mobility Command's 618th Air Operations Center at Scott. The AOC plans, tasks, and executes airlift, aerial refueling and aeromedical evacuation missions throughout the globe. “Additionally, there are about 20,000 pounds of medical equipment and supplies pre-positioned at Scott to provide assistance when called upon,” AMC spokesman Col. Chris Karns told Military.com. The service on Thursday deployed a 10-bed patient staging facility and 28 airmen from Travis Air Force Base, California, to St. Croix, to support patient movement from Schneider Regional Medical Center, St. Thomas, to Puerto Rico.

As Irma approached the Florida coast over the weekend, the Air Force said it would be using Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, as the staging areas for roughly 800 trucks, and various support facilities to include lodging and dining facilities, airfield operations, security and latrine services. “The Air Force stands ready to provide multiple capabilities, including vertical airlift, security forces, airfield repair and medium altitude persistent airborne platforms in support of hurricane relief operations,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. “Aircrews and aircraft are on alert to provide search and rescue support,” she said in an email.

Air Force Flies 300 Doctors to Florida for Irma Recovery | Military.com

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‘People are roaming like zombies.’ Virgin Islands stagger after storm passes.
September 10,`17 - Hurricane Irma pummels the Caribbean on its way to Florida

The storm-stricken Caribbean took on the feel of a sprawling disaster zone Sunday, with Cuban first responders using inflatable rafts to navigate flooded streets as panicked families sent up social-media pleas in search of loved ones on hard-hit islands farther east. On St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, “people there are roaming like zombies,” said Stacey Alvarado, a bar owner who managed to leave for the mainland. Her husband, who is still there, told her Sunday that residents and tourists are in shock. “They don’t know what to do. The island was wiped out. It’s like the walking dead down there.” Other islanders sent social media messages pleading for help, decrying looting and a series of armed burglaries. “We need help,” wrote St. John blogger Jenn Manes. “We need the United States government to step up. We need military. We need security.”

In Cuba, where the government said it had evacuated 1 million residents, Hurricane Irma’s driving winds and pelting rains sent roofs flying, knocked over trees, wrecked building and caused large-scale flooding along the northern coast. Officials in Havana warned of flooding that would last through Monday. In the city of Santa Clara, the Associated Press reported that 39 buildings had collapsed. As streets turned into rivers, authorities took to inflatable rafts to access coastal neighborhoods. Some Cubans had even sought shelter in caves. The brutal storm struck Cuba along a coast studded with resorts that are among the pillars of the island’s economy. Authorities warned of heavy damage from the storm, which has killed at least 25 people across the Caribbean. “The hardest-hit provinces are Camaguey, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus and to some extent Matanzas, the resort area of Varadero, which was directly in the path of the hurricane and where all the tourists were evacuated,” Richard Paterson, the CARE organization’s representative in Cuba, said by phone from Havana. “Power has been turned off throughout the city, in fact, throughout the country,” he said. “The electricity infrastructure received extensive serious damage.”

European governments came under fire as critics accused them of being slow to respond to crises in their Caribbean territories, where massive damage left thousands homeless as looting broke out in the streets. On Sunday, the French government announced that President Emmanuel Macron would travel to St. Martin, an island split between France and the Netherlands, on Tuesday. The French have already deployed more than 1,000 personnel to the Caribbean region in an aid-and-relief effort. The evacuation of U.S. citizens from the Dutch side resumed Sunday, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, after being suspended in anticipation of Hurricane Jose, which later veered off to the north. Priority is being given to those needing urgent medical care, she said. Residents in the devastated British Virgin Islands used Facebook in frantic calls for help.

One user, Lanein Blanchette, echoed many others still looking for word from relatives and friends whom they had not heard from since Irma began belting the region last week. “There is absolutely no news about East End on any of these pages,” she wrote. “I’ve posted over ten times asking for assistance as to whether anyone has seen my uncle Kingston ‘Iman’ Eddy and not one person has replied. I am lost for words at this point. I honestly don’t know what else to do.” At the same time, dramatic tales of escape began to emerge. Lauren Boquette, a 48-year-old restaurant manager on St. John, said his family had barricaded themselves in the bathroom of their home. When they emerged, he said, they saw a scene of total destruction. “It was beyond rough times, it was end-of-the-world times. Everything normal to us has been destroyed,” he said.

‘People are roaming like zombies.’ Virgin Islands stagger after storm passes.

Related:

How Hurricane Irma Is Sucking Florida’s Beaches Dry
The hurricane is leaving flat expanses of land where ocean used to be, but all that water will rush back as storm surge.

One of the most dangerous effects of a major hurricane is storm surge: a kind of temporary, localized sea-level rise caused by high winds and low atmospheric pressure. Storm surge is what made Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, the two most-expensive tropical cyclones in American history, so damaging and deadly. Storm surge is one of the most famous symptoms of hurricanes—so much so that it’s easy to forget what it is: the movement of billions of gallons of ocean water. It’s a hurricane exerting so much power that it sucks up water from one place and moves it hundreds of miles away.

We got an extraordinary look at the physical reality of storm surge this weekend as Hurricane Irma seethed across the Straits of Florida. Storm surge doesn’t just mean there’s an excess of water in one place; it also mean there’s water missing from somewhere else. All that water didn’t come from nowhere, after all. And on Saturday, a Twitter user named @kaydie_d posted a video from the Bahamas that showed a vast and barren plain where the ocean used to be:

Angela Fritz, an atmospheric scientist and the deputy weather editor at The Washington Post, immediately certified the video as depicting a real phenomenon. “I knew right away that even though it seemed impossible, it was absolutely legit,” she wrote. “As a meteorologist, there are things you learn in textbooks that you may never see in person. You know they happen theoretically, but the chances of seeing the most extraordinary weather phenomena are slim to none.”

Yet here was this most extraordinary of phenomena—on camera, going viral, and appearing across the Gulf. It was not limited to the islands. Soon, beaches across the Florida peninsula began reporting the strange sight. In Naples, and then in Tampa Bay, people described staggeringly low sea levels. In Sarasota, a manatee became stranded in the low tide. What’s causing the seas to drain? Irma’s shockingly low pressure is literally drawing water into the center of the storm and out of the ocean beds around it. You can think of a hurricane as a kind of vast engine that extracts energy and water from the seas and air and expels it as rain and wind. Here was an unmistakable example of how material that extraction can be.

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