On the devastating heels of Harvey. Yikes. As I post this (~5 pm PDT), it looks like Irma will enter the U.S. around Sunday morning with the eye somewhere between Key West and Miami (likely a Cat 4 at the time, perhaps even a 5).
Unreal (and, there's a now-Cat 4 Hurricane Jose further east in the central Atlantic behind Irma). I have kin and friends living up and down the length of Florida. Some have gotten out, others cannot or will not.
It is estimated that there are approximately 75,000 Florida LTC patients (nursing homes / "long-term care" facilities). I have no idea how many Floridians are patients in acute care facilities (the state is most recently reported to have more than 92,000 acute care beds). This is truly an evac nightmare.
Beyond the potential for mass loss of lives, the U.S. economic tab for these two storms alone will probably grow to close to a trillion dollars, counting all of damage/destruction and business losses from all of the widespread downtime. Trump can forget his absurd Mexico wall.
SATURDAY 5 P.M. PDT UPDATE
Satellite map above, 24 hours later (again obtained from the Miami Herald website).
The storm is now expected to cross the Keys and hit SW Florida as a Cat 4, likely all the way up to the Tampa area. Ugh.
CODA
While we're obsessing over ourselves in the U.S...
Thigh-deep grody water in the streets of Havana, Cuba in the wake of Irma. The trail of utter devastation stretches all the way back to the far eastern lower Caribbean islands.
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More to come...
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