Hurricane Irma Live Update: Latest News from South Florida & Miami | Miami Herald
Description: Live updates and latest news as Hurricane Irma arrives in Miami and South Florida. We bring you news of the storm and updates on damage.
Keywords: hurricane irma, irma, update, news, latest, storm, damage, miami, south florida, florida keys, key west, danger, evacuation, shelter, dade

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- #### Hurricane Irma makes landfall in Key West

  The storm, though temporarily weakened by a day along the Cuban coast, came in as the most powerful storm to strike the Keys in more than a half century.

The storm, though temporarily weakened by a day along the Cuban coast, came in as the most powerful storm to strike the Keys in more than a half century. NOAA
The storm, though temporarily weakened by a day along the Cuban coast, came in as the most powerful storm to strike the Keys in more than a half century. NOAA

## Hurricane

### Hurricane Irma live updates: Massive storm makes landfall in Florida Keys

By Patricia Mazzei, Rene Rodriguez and Nicholas Nehamas

pmazzei@miamiherald.com

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September 10, 2017 5:40 AM

After long days of anxious preparations and waiting, Hurricane Irma is arriving in South Florida on Sunday morning, still a dangerous Category 4 storm even though Miami-Dade and Broward counties will be spared the worst. The Florida Keys, however, will not be so lucky: Irma’s eye made landfall on Cudjoe Key at 9:10 a.m. and the storm is expected to move northwest up Florida’s Gulf Coast. More than a million households and businesses have no power in South Florida, and dangerous flooding and tornadoes are possible.

Stay with the Miami Herald for all the latest news on Sunday.

### Brickell is flooding

10:30 a.m.: Punishing winds are ripping through Brickell and water is rising in the streets. Southeast Twelfth Street resembles a river in the current squall. Miami’s financial district sits directly on Biscayne Bay.

— JOEY FLECHAS

### Rubio: If you left Miami, it’s too soon to come back

10:20 a.m.: Sen. Marco Rubio urged South Florida residents who evacuated Miami for places like Orlando and Tampa to stay in place even as the western part of the state faces a direct hit form Hurricane Irma.

“This is not a time for them to get out on the road and try to head back, this is a time for them to have confidence, hopefully, in where they are and just stay in place and ride it out,” Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning. “There really wasn’t anywhere in Florida I could point to and say, if you go there, you’re not going to see the storm. It’s going to cover all of Florida. I know people that went to Georgia that are now figuring out how to get out of Georgia because it’s headed in that direction.”

Rubio told Tapper that he did not evacuate from his Miami home because he wasn’t in a flood zone and away from the coast.

“My home was built in 2005 so my roof is built to withstand a Category 3 storm, which we won’t get the effects of in Miami.”

Rubio urged residents in Western Florida to follow the storm’s track throughout Sunday.

“We’re concerned about it intensifying as it heads into Southwest Florida, into Naples, Fort Myers, Sarasota, Tampa Bay. That has always been our biggest fear, a massive storm headed into that region pushing all that water in there plus the wind.”

— ALEX DAUGHERTY

### Coral Gables battered by heavy winds

10:05 a.m.: Tropical storm-force winds and extreme gusts are pummeling Coral Gables, bending trees to unnatural, deformed angles or pushing them to the ground.

## Related stories from Miami Herald

#### This alarming map shows what might be left of Florida when the sea level rises

#### Irma, with 130 mph winds, nears landfall in Lower Keys

#### Scott pleads with people to fear storm surge: ‘How do you survive that?’

#### ‘Like the Titanic right now:’ Irma begins to lash Key West as holdouts brace for the worst

#### Good morning, South Florida: The worst of Irma is yet to come.

The city’s trademark canopy is being shredded, creating impassable streets covered with branches or blocked by downed trees. The Gables’ characteristic barrel tiles on roofs are getting smashed by debris as trees crack apart.

Transformers began blowing out hours ago with that distinctive screeching-to-a-halt sound that wincing residents have come to recognize and hate. There are widespread power outages.

On Miami Beach, the National Hurricane Center says residents can expect gusts of between 80 and 100 miles per hour over next few hours. That is hurricane speed.

— LINDA ROBERTSON, ANDRES VIGLUCCI AND CHARLES RABIN

### More than 1.3 million power outages in South Florida

9:45 a.m.: Shortly after Category 4 Hurricane Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys Sunday morning, 1,378,773 Florida Power & Light customers were without power.

At 8 a.m. 103,900 Palm Beach County FPL customers were in the dark, and 29,670 had been restored. The numbers are for customer accounts, not people.

Miami-Dade County had the most outages at 574,490. In Broward County, 360,750 customers were without power.

Southwest Florida outages were not as great but are expected to begin increasing any minute. In Collier County 3,010 customers had outages, and 4,020 were restored.

In Lee County, 1,350 customers were without power and 1,760 were restored.

To report an outage, go to FPL.com

To view the outage map, report an outage, or check the status of an outage, click here.

FPL crews are working to restore power. Crews can work as long as winds are less than 35 mph.

Read the latest on power outages here.

— SUSAN SALISBURY, PALM BEACH POST

### Florida roads empty as Irma sweeps through

9:40 a.m.: Many primary roadways in southern and central Florida were desolate — or nearly so — on Sunday morning as Hurricane Irma neared landfall in the Florida Keys and her outer bands crept up the peninsula.

Real-time traffic maps from the state showed the gridlock that paralyzed motorists on Thursday, Friday and Saturday had dissipated, indicating that most all residents who wanted to flee had. Traffic counts on main thoroughfares, like I-95 or the Turnpike, showed barely anyone on the road by mid-morning.

The exception was an uptick on I-75 out of Tampa Bay, where more than 500 vehicles passed near Zephyrhills in Pasco County in the 8 o’clock hour. (That’s about half the normal flow, though.)

Read the full story here.

— KRISTEN M. CLARK IN TALLAHASSEE

### Two shelters without power

9:37 a.m.: All 42 Miami-Dade schools-turned-shelters were “reporting great structural integrity,” Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said via Twitter Sunday morning. Six of the shelters are currently running on generators and two have no power, although mechanics are on site.

The shelters replenished their food and water supplies Saturday and now have enough supplies for additional days, Carvalho told the Herald. The biggest issue will likely continue to be intermittent power.

“Some power strikes continue to bring power down, but generators are kicking in,” he said.

Shelters have been ordered to accept anyone “no questions asked” even if they are at capacity, Carvalho said.

UPDATE 9:51 a.m.: Power has returned to one of the dark shelters.

— KYRA GURNEY

### Miami-Dade police: We’ve stopped responding to calls

9:35 a.m.: Miami-Dade police halted responding to calls Sunday morning after Hurricane Irma brought hurricane-strength winds to the county.

“Our officers are now sheltered for their safety,” the county agency posted on Twitter at 9:13 a.m. “We cannot respond to calls for service. Stay indoors.”

— DOUGLAS HANKS

### Irma makes landfall in Florida Keys

9:30 a.m.: The center of fierce Hurricane Irma, pushing a dangerous flood of ocean water, made landfall early Sunday morning on Cudjoe Key, just a short drive down the Overseas Highway from Key West.

The storm arrived in the Lower Keys as a Category 4 with howling winds and the National Weather Service Key West office warned early Monday that sustained winds of up to 120 mph would continue for hours from Big Pine Key to Key West. A bigger concern was storm surge, which was still rising in the morning. Some social media posts already showed knee-deep water in portions of Old Town and forecasters said seven to 10 feet above ground level was a possibility in some areas.

Mike Brennan, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said that despite Irma’s landfall — at 9:10 a.m. for the record — that people sheltered in the Lower Keys should stay put until the storm clears out.

Read the full story here.

— CHARLES RABIN AND JENNY STALETOVICH

### Miami Beach on lockdown

9:25 a.m.: Sunday morning, it didn’t matter that the city-imposed Miami Beach curfew ended at 7 a.m. The weather told those who hadn’t evacuated Miami Beach to stay indoors.

Tropical storm force winds battered the peninsula so heavily that the city announced at 7:45 a.m. rescue services would be suspended until responders could travel safely. The city tweeted that most of the city had lost power, not a surprise as transformers blew like popcorn from late Saturday night until past Sunday dawn.

Watch images of choppy waters in Biscayne Bay here.

— DAVID J. NEAL

### Scott addresses emergency operations center — in secret

9:20 a.m.: Around 8:45 a.m., Gov. Rick Scott popped in the main room at the state Emergency Operations Center for a few minutes to address several dozens emergency response personnel.

As has been the case all week for any storm updates or briefings in that room, reporters were barred from listening — save for pressing their ears to a glass wall and hoping to catch the words.

A reporter from the Naples Daily News was able to discern Scott say: “We’re going to get through this,” and “we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Under past administrations and even as recently as Hurricane Matthew last fall under Scott, reporters were allowed in the EOC room to observe and report information from storm briefings and Scott’s visits.

But staff at the governor’s office and the Department of Emergency Management have denied access for Irma, even when it’s forecast to be far worse.

Meanwhile, Scott has spent his morning appearing on national network and cable morning shows. He won’t brief state and local press in Tallahassee until noon.

— KRISTEN M. CLARK IN TALLAHASSEE

### Miami-Dade: Stay where you are. And get comfortable.

9:15 a.m.: Miami-Dade wants residents to stay where they are, and plan to be there until Monday at the earliest.

After a night of tropical storm winds, the county’s top spokesman said the weather has deteriorated to the point that it would be far more dangerous for residents to head for a Miami-Dade shelter than to just stay where they are.

“We are not encouraging residents to move out and go to shelters at this time,” communications director Michael Hernández said Sunday morning. “They will not be turned away if you knock on the door. But we are asking residents to stay where they are. Because it is just too dangerous to be out on the road at this time.”

Miami-Dade has 43 shelters open for Hurricane Irma — by far the most in county history — and about 31,000 people are inside them. Eighteen are full,

As Hernández spoke shortly after 8:15 a.m., winds in Miami clocked around 40 mph, with gusts to 60. All of Miami-Dade County was under a tornado watch, and power outages were so bad that 56 percent of Florida Power and Light’s customers in the county (631,000) lacked electricity.

Hernández emphasized that weather forecasts call for Irma’s fierce winds to linger in Miami-Dade throughout Sunday.

“We’ve been going through a period where it was relatively stable,” he said. “The weather service assures me that today, all the way through midnight, you’re going to have [at least] this kind of weather outside.”

— DOUGLAS HANKS

### Massive power outages across South Florida

9:10 a.m.: A third of homes and businesses in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were without power Sunday morning as Hurricane Irma began its assault on the lower Florida Keys.

As of 8 a.m. in Miami-Dade, 456,710 customers didn’t have power out of a total 1.1 million customers, according to FPL’s data. That’s nearly half of homes and businesses, a total that has surged more than 500 percent in the last 12 hours. According to reports, most of Miami Beach was without power Sunday morning.

Broward’s outages have also spiked. In Broward, 182,150 out of 933,300 customers were without power, up from just 25,890 at 6 p.m.

Read the full story here.

— NANCY DAHLBERG

### Irma keeps police and paramedics off the road

8:35 a.m.: Emergency responders across South Florida urged residents to stay off the roads as Category 4 Hurricane Irma reached the Florida Keys on Sunday morning.

“Powerlines are down and roads are flooded,” warned Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue. “It is extremely dangerous outside with flying debris. Stay inside and bunker down.”

Reports of powerlines down and trees obstructing roads will continue to make driving conditions unsafe on Sunday. At high wind speeds, police officers and fire-rescue personnel will not be able to respond to emergencies.

Read the full story here.

— SYNDEY PEREIRA

### Waters surging in Florida Keys

8:30 a.m.: Storm waters are surging in Key West as Hurricane Irma’s powerful eyewall moves into the Lower Keys. Storm surge could rise as high as 10 feet, which authorities describe as life-threatening. The eye is expected to make landfall at any moment.

A video from National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss shows just how high waters levles are rising.

At a Marathon shelter, Keynoter editor Larry Kahn reported that “everything is underwater [in the city of Marathon], I mean everything.” A man in the shelter died of natural causes overnight.

Read the full story here.

— NICHOLAS NEHAMAS

### Sailboats taking a pounding in Coconut Grove

8:10 a.m.: Hurricane Irma is pounding boats along the Coconut Grove waterfront, with at least one washed up on the seawall and Biscayne Bay lapping atop piers shortly after low tide Sunday morning.

A reader sent a photo of a sailboat that landed on the rocks by the city’s Seminole Boat Ramp in the Grove. A video showed that at the nearby Dinner Key Marina and Grove Bay Grill (the restaurant by Miami City Hall that used to be called Scotty’s) waves were crashing over the seawalls. A large multi-hull sailboat tied up there, Emmanuelle, had lifted partially onto the seawall. At a nearby pier, a smaller sailboat named Scrimshaw partially broke loose and was threatening to collide with the larger vessel.

A sailboat has landed on the rocks by the city of Miami’s Seminole Boat Ramp in Coconut Grove as Hurricane Irma approaches South Florida.
Courtesy

High tide for Dinner Key was still hours away, at 1:10 p.m. Irma’s fiercest winds still had hours before arrival, as well. That means the most dangerous hours for the Grove’s sailing fleet are still to come.

Alain Lecusay, 51, was checking on his sailboat Minana around 9a.m. Sunday — the second time he’d checked on the boat that day.

“I love very much so I keep checking in on her,” he said. “She’s okay, she’s excellent.”

He’d driven his truck down to the marina at 5 a.m., then realized he’d left his keys inside the locked vehicle. He had to walk back to his home several blocks away and bike back with the spare key.

But Lecusay, with a daredevil smile and yellow slicker, had a GoPro strapped to his head recording all the while.

“I’m enjoying what dead men can’t,” he said. “These are times to record.”

He said he planned to send some of the footage to his daughter, 18, who lives in Seattle.

“She’s like, ‘Papa, what are you doing during a hurricane?’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘This is Miami. This is why I like it.’ ”

“I don’t know that anybody expected it to be this bad,” he added, as the winds picked up and choppy waves surged onto the sidewalk. “What’s the forecast? Is it going to get worse?”

— DOUGLAS HANKS AND ELIZABETH KOH

### Miami Beach emergency workers no longer responding due to heavy weather

8:00 a.m.: Miami Beach officials announced that rescue teams are no longer responding to calls as weather conditions deteriorate on the barrier island. First responders will begin going out again once the storm has passed.

Some streets started to flood overnight in the Beach as outer bands of Hurricane Irma pounded the barrier island with relentless rain and winds so powerful that stop signs were spinning. Trees and power lines are down, and transformers blew. Television reporters tried to stay upright during live shots from coastal areas, including Derek Van Dam of CNN, who reported nearly hurricane force winds from South Beach.

High tide is expected to roll in around midday. Combined with a higher water level, persistent rain is expected to cause flooding.

— JOEY FLECHAS

### Irma too dangerous for Rick Scott to travel; Trump calls

7:50 a.m.: With Hurricane Irma affecting much of Florida by Sunday morning — making travel unsafe — Gov. Rick Scott remains in the state’s capital city, where he just took a call from President Donald Trump.

Scott’s staff sent out a revised schedule at 7:50 a.m. showing that he received a call from President Trump at 7:35 a.m.

The governor has spoken with Trump by phone several times in the past week regarding Hurricane Irma.

Scott is staying busy — spending the next four hours going from national TV interview to national TV interview, with the state Emergency Operations Center as his photogenic backdrop.

His lineup includes almost all of the networks, several more than once: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Weather Channel, Fox News and Fox Business. (No MSNBC.)

Scott will not provide an update to or field questions from state and local media gathered in Tallahassee until a press conference scheduled for noon. He began his day with a 6:45 a.m. weather briefing and will have another at 11:15 a.m.

From the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee, Gov. Rick Scott reviews his talking points before a four-hour stretch of TV interviews on national morning shows on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017
Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau Kristen M. Clark

For the national interviews, Scott sits in a small, locked conference room adjacent to a media briefing room where reporters work. Both rooms have a glass wall of windows overlooking the main operations room at the EOC, which is full of desks and a wall of projection screens used to coordinate the state’s hurricane preparation and response.

Scott is largely repeating talking points he’s said for days — urging Floridians to be safe and prepare for dangerous storm surge.

TV producers and Scott’s staff were hurriedly preparing for his appearances since before 6 a.m., phoning networks to confirm broadcast connections and arranging seating and lighting for how the governor would look on camera.

— KRISTEN M. CLARK IN TALLAHASSEE

### Nearly 500,000 in Miami-Dade do not have power

7:45 a.m.: Even before Irma makes landfall in the Keys, 499,526 homes and businesses are without power in Miami-Dade County, according to FPL. That’s about 45 percent of Dade’s 1.1 million customers. In Broward, 21 percent of customers (191,499) do not have power and in Palm Beach 16 percent of customers (118,909) have been cut off.

> sitch #MiamiBeach power out along PineTree/La Gorce N of 44th @Fontainebleau @nobumiamibeach have power transformers blowin' in Miami #Irma pic.twitter.com/RxIA8F6WGo

> — ShanegriLa (@Scootube) September 10, 2017

— NICHOLAS NEHAMAS

### Little Haiti woman has a hurricane baby at home

7:30 a.m.: Though Miami has largely been spared the worst of Hurricane Irma, winds grew so extreme overnight in the city that Miami’s rescue crews were told to begin using judgment when deciding whether to respond to emergency calls.

One homeowner in Flagami at 331 SW 71st Ave. was lucky that firefighters were able to come out with two fire engines and extinguish a fire after a downed electrical wire set the building ablaze.

Fire rescue contacted FPL, which shut down the grid. No one was injured.

Paramedics also rescued a man who badly cut his arm and lost his pulse.

But a pregnant woman in Little Haiti wasn’t quite so lucky.

With paramedics unable to go out into the storm, the assistant medical director at Jackson Memorial Hospital talked the woman through delivering her baby girl at home Sunday morning, according to Assistant Fire Chief Eloy Garcia.

“We weren’t able to respond. So she delivered the placenta, also... She’s stable at home,” Garcia said.

Pete Gomez, Miami’s emergency management director, said conditions remain dangerous, so replacement crews will not be coming in until the weather improves.

“We’ve got to follow our protocol,” he said.

Gomez said he also got a call Saturday night around 10 p.m. from the Miami Shores police chief about an 18-story building with elderly residents where the sea wall had been washed out.

Gomez said the chief wanted to know if the situation was dangerous. He said Miami’s building director talked to police about evacuating the bottom floor.

“It washed out a sea wall completely. I’ve never seen that here,” Gomez said. “It’s indicative of the damage the surges can cause.”

As for police, Deputy Police Chief Luis Cabrera said the night was mostly quiet, save for plenty of downed trees. He urged people to stay inside.

— DAVID SMILEY

### Irma’s northern eyewall reaches Keys

7:05 a.m.: Irma’s northern eyewall is brushing up against the lower Florida Keys. But the National Hurricane Center won’t consider it a landfall until the center of the eye passes over land.

— CHARLES RABIN

### ‘Quite a few’ Miami-Dade ambulances got called overnight

6:18 a.m.: Despite raging tropical storm conditions, enough people were on the road in Miami-Dade overnight to prompt “quite a few” car accidents and rescue calls, said Erika Benitez, public information officer for Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue.

“People get confident when they start seeing that the storm is moving away from Miami-Dade County. And they try to venture out,” she said Sunday morning. “Some people who maybe were in shelters are trying to possibly leave their shelters, and we have these situations.

“We do ask the public to remain in their shelters, in place, at this time to try and avoid further emergencies,” she said. “Because we may not be able to get to them.”

— DOUGLAS HANKS

### Destructive winds widen power outages

6 a.m.: Here’s the clearest sign Irma’s destructive winds are starting to move in earnest over South Florida: The number of power outages in the region jumped in the past hour to more than 423,000.

Here are the latest figures from Florida Power & Light: 250,740 without power in Miami-Dade, 130,990 in Broward, and 41,460 in Palm Beach.

— RENE RODRIGUEZ

### Venetian Causeway residents keep losing, regaining power

5:55 a.m.: For Miami Beach residents near the Venetian Causeway who didn’t heed evacuation orders, Saturday night into Sunday morning resembled someone playing with a giant light switch. Power to the area blinked four times during the night with most streetlights and a few condo buildings repeatedly regaining power.

The fifth power flicker over the Venetian Causeway took out the area’s power.
David J. Neal Miami Herald staff

Well, mostly: The eastern Venetian Causeway lights have been out since a transformer blew at around 11 p.m. Saturday.

— DAVID J. NEAL

### Latest advisory shows Irma will land soon

5 a.m.: Irma is about to move over the lower Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane, according to the latest National Hurricane Center advisory, which predicted landfall on or near Key West in the coming hours. Landfall is official the moment the center of the hurricane’s eye passes over land.

“Do not venture outside when the calm eye of the hurricane passes over, as dangerous winds will return very quickly when the eye moves away,” the advisory warned.

Read more on the 5 a.m. advisory here.

— PATRICIA MAZZEI

### Flood warning issued for most of southern peninsula

4:40 a.m.: The National Weather Service in Miami issued a flood warning for most of Florida’s southern peninsula, citing increased rainfall from Irma.

The warning, in effect until 4:45 p.m., is for “urban areas and small streams” in Miami-Dade, Broward and Collier counties, and for the southern portion of Hendry County.

Up to 8 inches of rain have already fallen in some areas, with 8-15 inches of rain expected in most places, and more than 20 inches possible in some locations.

Expected to flood are Miami, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Homestead, Pembroke Pines, Hollywood and Naples. Some streets in downtown Miami and Miami Beach already looked like shallow streams in the wee hours Sunday.

“Turn around, don`t drown when encountering flooded roads,” the flood warning read. “Most flood deaths occur in vehicles.”

— PATRICIA MAZZEI

### South Florida power outages climb

4 a.m.: Power outages steadily increased Sunday morning as Irma winds picked up across South Florida. Nearly 282,000 Florida Power & Light customers were in the dark: 184,050 in Miami-Dade, 73,400 in Broward and 24,410 in Palm Beach. All 29,000 customers for Keys Energy Services, a lower Keys utility, lost power by about 11 p.m. Saturday, the company said.

— RENE RODRIGUEZ AND PATRICIA MAZZEI

A Key West resident watches as waves crash onto a seawall Saturday. Charles Trainor Jr. Miami Herald staff

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