After Irma, battered Caribbean islands brace for Category-4 Hurricane Maria

Islands in the Caribbean still reeling from megastorm Irma braced on Tuesday for a fresh battering as Hurricane Maria approached, wielding potentially lethal force.

In just a few hours, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) hiked Maria from a Category Two to a Category Four hurricane, packing winds of 209 kilometres per hour that it forecast would strengthen further over the next day or so.

"Potentially life-threatening" storm surges, destructive waves, flash floods and mudslides threatened the Leeward Islands -- the island group that includes Martinique, Puerto Rico and the US and British Vigin islands -- the NHC said.

"The eye and the intense inner core is expected to pass near Dominica in the next few hours," the centre warned in its 2100 GMT (2:30 am IST) bulletin, describing Maria as "an extremely dangerous major hurricane".

The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe -- the bridgehead for aid for Irma-hit French territories -- ordered all at-risk zones to be evacuated.

The order, effective from 4 pm local time, bars specific areas considered to be at risk of "flooding, submersion and landslips," according to the statement, issued by the island's prefect.

Islanders on Martinique, which is also part of France, were ordered to stay indoors under a maximum-level "violet" alert.
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Hurricane Irma regains Category 4 force; Indian missions set up helpline

Millions of people, including thousands of Indian-Americans, in Florida braced for Hurricane Irma as it regained strength as a Category 4 storm and aimed towards the coastal US state with wind speed of 210 km per hours.

Around 120,000 Indian-Americans reside across Florida while thousands of them live in the now-dangerous zones of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa.

Miami and Tampa appeared "ghost towns" as nervous residents, many of whom struggled to cope with abandoning their homes, moved to safer places following mandatory evacuation notices.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said Irma regained strength as a Category 4 storm — after being downgraded to Category 3 for more than 12 hours — as it moved to Florida.

The deadly storm is expected to hit the US mainland around 7 am local time today. Its outer rain bands lashed the Florida Keys, the NWS said. A 127 kmph gust was recorded as Irma drew closer to Florida, CNN reported.

The Indian embassy in the US has opened a round-the-clock helpline number and rushed senior diplomats to Atlanta to lead relief efforts for Indian-Americans stuck in the region.
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Hurricane Irma: 70,000 in shelters, 3.4 mn may face power cut

Florida Governor Rick Scott on Saturday said 6.5 million people were ordered to evacuate ahead of Irma and that 70,000 people have moved into 385 shelters across the state.

"There's still room for more," CNN quoted him as saying. He said that more shelters would be opened on Saturday.

"Protecting life is our top priority. No resource or expense will be spared to protect families," Scott added.

Meanwhile, Florida Power and Light (FPL) estimated that nearly 3.4 million of its customers could be without power at some point during Hurricane Irma.

If that comes to pass, it will be the largest number of outages they have ever had to deal with, FPL spokesman Chris McGrath told CNN.

"We think this could be the most challenging restoration in the history of the US," McGrath said.

The Governor said that 76,000 customers had already lost power.
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Hurricane Irma heads Florida after killing 18 people in Caribbean islands

Hurricane Irma will "devastate" part of the US, authorities warned, as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century closed in on the state of Florida after lashing the Caribbean with devastating winds and rain and killing at least 18 people.

Irma was about 724 km southeast of Miami, Florida, early on Friday (local time) after saturating the northern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and pummelling the Turks and Caicos Islands, ABC News reported.

The "extremely dangerous" hurricane was downgraded from a category five to a category four early on Friday but still packed winds as strong as 240 km per hour, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said in an advisory.

Head of the US' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Brock Long said US officials were preparing a massive response to the storm.

"Hurricane Irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the United States in either Florida or some of the southeastern states," he said.

Long warned that parts of Florida would be out of electricity for days, if not longer, and that more than 100,000 people may need shelter.
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US energy industry claws back after Harvey, but gas prices still up

Several key refineries began restarting over the weekend after Hurricane Harvey slammed into the US Gulf Coast energy hub and crippled their operations, but gasoline prices remained near two-year high amid fears of shortages.

The storm took down a quarter of US oil refining capacity and lifted average gasoline prices by more than 17.5 cents since August 23.

On Saturday, ExxonMobil Corp began restarting the country's second-largest oil refinery, the 560,500 barrels per day (bpd) Baytown, Texas, unit, while Phillips 66 said it was working to resume operations at its 247,000 bpd Sweeny refinery and at its Beaumont oil and fuels terminal.

The restarts followed an announcement from Valero Energy Corp on Friday that it was increasing production at its Corpus Christi, Texas-area refineries.

The hurricane battered Texas before weakening to a tropical storm and inundated the region with torrential rains and flooding.

Some pipelines also restarted over the weekend, assuaging worries over the ability of refineries to get the crude oil they need to operate. Magellan Midstream Partners said it had resumed operations on Friday on its BridgeTex and Longhorn crude oil pipelines, which transport around 675,000 bpd of West Texas crude to East Houston.
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Photos: Trump hugs children, serves food in Houston as city fights back

resident Donald Trump tried on the role of “comforter-in-chief” on Saturday, playing with children in an evacuation centre and passing out food and supplies to those in need after Hurricane Harvey’s assault on Houston.

Trump, dealing with the first natural disaster of his 8-month-old presidency, comforted victims and thanked volunteers and first responders after being criticized earlier in the week for not showing sufficient empathy on his first trip to the storm-battered Texas coast.

Trump, 71, was joined by his wife, Melania, as he passed out food and hugged, kissed and played with children at the “kid zone” in Houston’s NRG Center, a 700,000-square-foot (65,000 square meters) facility that was turned in to the city’s largest emergency shelter.

Trump appeared relaxed as he posed for photographs with volunteers and chatted with those relocated to the shelter alongside Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
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Hurricane Harvey: Dell, Samsung, other corps donate $170 mln for relief

US corporate giants have pledged a whopping $170 million for disaster relief operations to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, one of the most destructive storms in US history that killed at least 47 people.

More than 185,000 homes were damaged and 9,000 destroyed as 42,000 people remain in shelters amid overflowing rivers and reservoirs, Texas officials said.

Harvey has soaked Texas with the heaviest rainfall in US history.

Authorities continue to search for survivors and made helicopter rescues from rooftops as the death toll from Harvey climbed to at least 47.

Companies have pledged $170 million to relief efforts as of Thursday, according to an estimate from the US Chamber of Commerce.

Fifty-two companies had donated $1 million or more as of that time. These figures are constantly growing as pledges continue to pour in.

Tech billionaire and Houston native Michael Dell has committed $36 million to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

The founder and CEO of Dell and his wife Susan yesterday also announced the launch of the Rebuild Texas Fund, along with Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

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