Aircraft carrier rushes to the rescue in battered Florida Keys, hardest hit by Irma in US

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A file photo shows the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its support fleet. The carrier is headed to the Florida Keys as part of relief efforts. Photo: US Navy

Published: 9:10am, 12 Sep 2017Updated: 3:32am, 26 Jun 2018

Authorities sent an aircraft carrier and other Navy ships to help with search-and-rescue operations in Florida on Monday as a flyover of the hurricane-battered Keys yielded what the governor said were scenes of devastation.

“I just hope everyone survived,” Governor Rick Scott said.

He said boats were cast ashore, water, sewers and electricity were knocked out, and “I don’t think I saw one trailer park where almost everything wasn’t overturned.” Authorities also struggled to clear the single highway connecting the string of islands to the mainland.

The Keys felt Irma’s full fury when the storm blew ashore as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday morning with 210km/h winds. How many people in the dangerously exposed, low-lying islands defied evacuation orders and stayed behind was unclear.

In this handout photo released by the US Air Force, a member from the California National Guard makes his way to a C-130H Hercules from the Texas Air National Guard at Hurlburt Field near Pensacola, Florida on Monday. Photo: AFP

Damage on the Marco Island area of Florida, where Hurricane Irma hit hard. Photo: TNS

As Irma weakened into a tropical storm and finally left Florida on Monday after a run up the entire 650km length of the state, the full scale of its destruction was still unknown, in part because of cut-off communications and blocked roads.

“How are we going to survive from here?” asked Gwen Bush, who waded through thigh-deep floodwaters outside her central Florida home to reach National Guard rescuers and get a ride to a shelter. “What’s going to happen now? I just don’t know.”