Floridians return to storm-battered homes as Irma flooding spreads

(Worthy News) – Storm-shocked Floridians returned to shattered homes on Monday as the remnants of Hurricane Irma pushed inland, leaving more than half of all state residents without power and city streets underwater from Orlando and Jacksonville into coastal Georgia and South Carolina.

Downgraded to a tropical storm early on Monday, Irma had ranked as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record before barreling into the Florida Keys on Sunday and plowing northward along the Gulf Coast and moving inland to wreak havoc across a wide swath of the third-most populous U.S. state.

Still, the scope of damage in Florida and neighboring states paled in comparison with the utter devastation left by Irma as a rare Category 5 hurricane in parts of the Caribbean, where the storm killed nearly 40 people – at least 10 of them in Cuba – before turning its fury on Florida. [ Source (Read More…) ]