HURRICANE IRMA DEVASTATES CARIBBEAN AND HEADS TOWARD FLORIDA
One of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded crescendoed over the Caribbean on Thursday, crumpling island better known as beach paradises into half-habitable emergency zones and sideswiping Puerto Rico before churning north. It is expected to hit the Florida Keys and South Florida by Saturday night.
More than 60 percent of households in Puerto Rico were without power. On St. Martin, an official said 95 percent of the island was destroyed. The Haitian government called for agencies, stores and banks to shut down as the storm hit. Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda said that half of Barbuda had been left homeless.
Watching Hurricane Irma maraud across Barbuda and Anguilla, residents of Florida and others who found themselves on the wrong side of the forecast were hastening to get out of the way. Government officials in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina pleaded for people to evacuate vulnerable areas, triggering a scramble for the essentials – gasoline, water, sandbags – that, even for hurricane-hardened Floridians, was laced with dread and punctuated with dire warnings from every direction.
Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us /destruction-caribbean-irma-florida.html. Acesso em: 8 de setembro de 2017.
O furacão Irma está sendo considerado o maior dos últimos tempos, atingindo a categoria 5, a máxima da escala de furacões.
De acordo com o texto, pode-se afirmar que