Death and devastation feared as Hurricane Irma makes landfall
‘Irma is the kind of storm where you get thousands of lives lost. This is not going to be the big slow-motion flood like Harvey — this is a real, honest-to-God hurricane’
Boston — Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to form in the open Atlantic Ocean, made landfall in the Caribbean early on Wednesday and barrelled towards Puerto Rico, on a path that may bring it ashore in Florida and destroy so much property that damages may surpass Hurricane Katrina. Irma has sent cruise lines and insurance stocks plunging, with Barclays estimating insured losses in a worst-case scenario at $130bn. Natural gas slid on speculation that the storm will wipe out demand for the power-plant fuel, and orange and cotton futures surged on potential crop damage. The eye of the storm was passing over Barbuda, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at 2am New York time. Irma follows less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey smashed ashore in Texas, knocking offline almost a quarter of US oil refining capacity and causing widespread damage, power outages and flooding. While the latest models show the latest storm veering away from gas and oil platforms off the...
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