Hurricane Irma after battering Caribbean as well as several areas of Florida, has now weakened into a tropical storm. However, the once strongest storm in the history of Atlantic has caused a lot of trouble to the residents of the sunshine state.
The storm uprooted trees, toppled boats, and left trailer homes completely damaged in Florida. In fact, at least 12 million residents continue to remain without power in Florida. Floodwaters have also risen in areas as far as South Carolina including Charleston.
However, the storm caused not too many fatalities in the state of Florida taking consideration, the intensity and the duration of the storm. It is the lack of electricity in Florida which has left millions of residents in a crippled state. The darkness in several areas could last for not just days but also a few weeks. There has never been such an outage in the state so far.
However, the silver lining in all this is that even during the largest mass evacuation in the history of United States along with millions in darkness, Irma did spare quite a few cities including Tampa and Orlando in Florida. However, Jacksonville which should have remained unscathed witnessed record breaking rains and winds.
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Authorities still do not feel that it is safe for evacuators in Florida to move back to their homes just yet as flood threat still looms large over many areas.
Irma is now expected to weaken into a tropical depression in the next 24 hours. However, the system is expected to continue pouring rains. In fact, a state of emergency was declared in Carolinas, Georgia as well as Alabama by President Trump last night due to heavy rains in the region.
Thousands of flights remain in halt in view of Tropical Storm Irma. However, as the storm continues to weaken, the situation will witness an improvement in the coming days.
Image Credit: metro.uk
