Hurricane Irma Weakens to a Category 1 Storm

That wind field is impacting an astonishing five states – Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.

“Our goal is don’t put any more lives at risk”, he said, adding that the current major threat is flooding in the northern part of the state.

“Don’t think just because this has passed you can run home”.

At least nine deaths in the US are now attributed to Irma, some hit by falling trees or tree limbs and one killed in a storm-related auto accident.

Irma was forecast to cross the eastern Florida Panhandle and move into southern Georgia later in the day, dumping as much as 41cm of rain, government forecasters said.

Bryan Koon, Florida’s emergency management director, said late Sunday, Sept. 10, that authorities had only scattered information about the storm’s toll.

A team of 59 urban search and rescue experts is flying Monday to the Dutch territory that’s home to some 40,000 people, where 70 percent of homes were badly damaged last week by a direct hit from the Category 5 storm.

Some 540,000 people were ordered to evacuate days earlier from Savannah and the rest of Georgia’s coast.

The day after Hurricane Irma made landfall here, attacking with downpours and 120 miles per hour winds, residents were assessing the wreckage and deciding what to do next. “It is time to take this storm seriously”. A tweet by WFLA reporter Josh Benson included footage shot by Miami business owners while inside their store, showing the view through the window – they were surrounded by a wall of water that appeared to be several feet deep.

The National Weather Service in Atlanta issued a tropical storm watch for the area Monday and Tuesday.

“We did everything possible we needed to make sure that nothing was going to put us in any physical danger”, weather Juston Drake said Monday. These winds could bring down trees and cause power outages.

Three quarters of the people in the county at one point had lost their power. So when you’re talking about the west coast of Florida, the Gulf Coast, the damage is likely to be very severe there. Some homes and businesses could be without power for weeks, especially in the hardest-hit areas like southwest Florida, the NextEra Energy Inc unit said.

MARTIN: That’s NPR’s Greg Allen joining us from Miami.