The storm was upgraded to a Category 5, the highest NHC designation, earlier in the day. While some fluctuations in intensity are likely, Irma is expected to remain a Category 4 or 5 for the next couple of days, the Hurricane Center said.
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello urged the 3.4 million residents of the U.S. territory to seek refuge in one of 460 hurricane shelters in advance of the storm and later ordered police and National Guard troops to begin evacuations of flood-prone areas in the north and east of the island.
“This is something without precedent,” Rossello told a news conference.
Police later confirmed that a 75-year-old man died while preparing for the storm in the island’s central mountains.
Authorities in the Florida Keys called for a mandatory evacuation of the islands’ visitors to start at sunrise on Wednesday, and public schools throughout South Florida were ordered closed, some as early as Wednesday.
Residents of low-lying areas in densely populated Miami-Dade County were urged to move to higher ground by Wednesday as a precaution against coastal storm surges, three days before Irma was expected to make landfall in Florida.
Several tiny islands in the resort-heavy eastern Caribbean were the first in harm’s way.
Gary Randall, head of the Blue Waters Resort on Antigua’s north coast, said the staff had boarded up windows, stripped trees of coconuts and fronds and secured anything that could become a hazard.
“I wasn’t that nervous yesterday, but today I’m nervous,” Randall said by telephone, adding that he expected the hotel’s beach to be swept away and much of the 108-room property to be flooded.
Hurricane watches were in effect for Guadeloupe, Haiti, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas.
Julia Nuñez Rodriguez, a single mother of three who lives north of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, was most worried about the potentially high death toll. “I’m hoping and praying for the best,” she said.
Airlines canceled flights to the region, and American Airlines added three extra flights to Miami from San Juan, St. Kitts and St. Maarten.
Irma is expected to become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland in as many weeks, but its precise trajectory remained uncertain on Tuesday. The Atlantic hurricane season ends on Nov. 30.
Residents of Texas and Louisiana were still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, which struck Texas as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 25. It dumped several feet of rain, destroying thousands of homes and businesses, killed an estimated 60 people and displaced more than 1 million others.
Texas-based television producer Bryan Eckert, who endured the upheaval of Harvey last week, found himself on Tuesday in the path of Irma as he and his wife sought to take an ill-fated sailing getaway to recoup in the British Virgin Islands.
“We thought we’d have a nice trip to island hop,” Eckert, 50, an employee of the NBC affiliate station in San Antonio, said by telephone as he hunkered down on the second floor of a Tortola hotel. “I thought this would be a vacation.”
