After Hurricane Irma ravaged the string of islands known as the Florida Keys, officials are now warning tourists and residents to stay away until further notice, noting: “The Keys are not open for business.”
Houses and mobile homes were uprooted and other infrastructure was destroyed, while an innumerable amount of boats in the Keys also suffered damage from Irma’s powerful winds.
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Floodwaters surround Gilbert’s Resort in Key Largo, Florida.
(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
In a tweet Monday morning, a CBS Miami reporter said that “It’s hard to describe the lower Florida Keys, but said it could be best described as a “war zone.”
“For most of the Florida Keys, there is no fuel, electricity, running water, or cell service,” Monroe County officials said in a news release.
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A boat is partially submerged in Key Largo, Florida, after Hurricane Irma.
(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Hurricane Irma made its first landfall in Florida Sunday morning in the Keys as a Category 4 storm, with 130-mph winds.
In a White House press briefing Monday afternoon, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert said recovery in the Florida Keys is “going to take a while. … I would expect that the Keys are not fit for re-entry for regular citizenry for weeks.”
Although residents of the Keys were warned of Irma’s forecast path through the islands, hundreds stayed behind – and now, officials say that “supplies are running low” and “anxiety is running high.”
Nobody can enter the island via bridges in the Florida Keys until they are inspected by the Florida Department of Transportation, Monroe County Administrator Roman Gastesi told WFOR.
Florida DOT tweeted that U.S. Route 1, the only passage in our out of the Keys is closed, and that residents and visitors cannot return until assessments of roads and bridges are complete.
Monroe County officials said that four bridge inspection teams were dispatched Monday morning, as well as five “cut-and-toss crews,” in an effort to clear roadways and other blocked areas.
Crews planned to begin searching each home, house-by-house, in the Keys Monday to check on survivors, Gastesi told The Associated Press. He added that an airborne relief mission was planning to deliver emergency supplies to areas walloped by Irma.
Scott flew with a U.S. Coast Guard crew on Monday to survey the damage in the Keys. He later tweeted, “We’ll get through this together.”
Fox News’ Mike Arroyo, Adam Housley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
