Hurricane Irma kills 10 in Caribbean, heads for Florida

Hurricane Irma has pounded the Caribbean, shredding homes and weather records and leaving at least 10 people dead before honing in on the United States where up to a million people were ordered to flee.

The evacuation of coastal areas of Florida and neighboring Georgia was the biggest seen in the US in a dozen years, as Brock Long, head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, warned: "It will be truly devastating.

"The entire southeastern United States better wake up and pay attention."

Barreling across the Caribbean, the rare Category Five Irma yesterday wielded monster winds and torrential rain, wreaking destruction on tiny islands like St Martin, where 60 percent of homes were wrecked, before slamming into the US Virgin Islands.

In its westward rampage, Irma packed winds of up to 185 miles per hour (295 kilometers per hour), an intensity that it sustained for 33 hours -- the longest of any storm since satellite monitoring began in the 1970s.

The latest bulletin from the Miami-based National Hurricane Center put the winds at 175 mph as the storm headed for the Bahamas.

Devastation was left in the storm's wake. The International Red Cross said 1.2 million people had already been hit by Irma, a number that could rise to 26 million.
READ MORE