![]() ![]() To that add the peril of numerous downed electricity poles, and sharp debris in the water, making arrival by boat impossible. Army vehicles are arriving too, and a constant stream of fire and police cars, their emergency lights blazing.īut with up to 42 bridges between Marathon and Key West that might not be structurally sound, getting to those in direst need is proving slow work. Help is now arriving, with a convoy of 20 white Fema Urban Search and Rescue trucks assembled in Marathon and ready to go down the road to encounter the unknown. A few miles further down US 1 is Cudjoe Key, where the eye of Irma passed overhead, and further still Key West, where people are stranded with virtually no water, fuel or food, no functioning sewerage treatment or phone contact and with the water pipelines that served them from Florida City cracked.ĭamage from Hurricane Irma in Marathon, Florida. Paul and Ruth 11/5/55”.Īmid such devastation, the knowledge is that there is worse further down the road, where at this point the media are still unable to go. Outside, several vinyl records, stripped of their sleeves, have been placed on the beach, including You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone and this one: “The wedding ceremony. The back window of a house has been torn out, allowing a view directly into the bedroom, a museum piece of life before the hurricane came, complete with bedroom TV and perfume bottles still standing on the dresser. There’s a bottle of Chardonnay, remarkably still intact, a tool kit and a fishing rod. Everywhere are scattered intimate personal possessions of the local residents, as though Irma had called, grabbed anything at hand, then flung it in fury all around. Trees are down, a roof lies quizzically on its own without the house beneath it, a golf buggy is torn and twisted and covered in seaweed. It is as if an artist had been commissioned to create an installation depicting Armageddon, Florida style. ![]() On the southern side of town, by the water, where Irma landed in the early hours of Sunday morning as a roaring category 4 hurricane, the scenes of devastation are almost beyond realistic. A Cessna plane in the tiny airport that marks the entrance to the Key is doing a good impression of a dead seagull, flipped on its back. Part of the road has simply disappeared into the sea, and this being Florida, there’s a giant plastic dinosaur strewn across a lane and a sign saying “God cares” lying on its back. ![]()
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