Hurricane Irma turned its fury toward the Florida Keys on Saturday as it completed a destructive march along Cuba’s northern coast and set off an 11th hour scramble for safety by Americans who may have ignored earlier warnings to evacuate.
Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to rip through Florida’s southern archipelago on Sunday morning as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Tracking models showed it then making landfall on the western side of the Florida peninsula and heading up the coast.
Irma, which has killed at least 22 people in the Caribbean, was considered a life-threatening danger to Florida as well and will likely inflict billions of dollars in damage in the third-most-populous U.S. state.
