Hurricane Irma batters Caribbean

 In Hurricane Irma's destructive path across the Caribbean eight people have been killed and 23 injured in French island territories and the death toll is expected to rise as rescue teams continue their search across the islands.

A total of 100,000 food rations have been sent to the islands – enough for four days of supplies.

More than 1,000,000 people in Puerto Rico – around 70 per cent of the population – have been left without power from the category five storm which is heading towards Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Communications in the area are difficult with between 90 and 95 per cent of buildings on Barbuda destroyed.

 Eight dead and 23 injured in French Islands

St Maartin

Antigua

About 60 percent of the island’s 1,400 residents were left homeless, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said.

‘It is just really a horrendous situation,’ Browne said after returning to Antigua from a plane trip to the neighboring island.

On St Thomas in the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands, Laura Strickling spent 12 hours hunkered down with her husband and 1-year-old daughter in a boarded-up basement apartment with no power as the storm raged outside. They emerged to find the lush island in tatters.

Many of their neighbours’ homes were damaged and once-dense vegetation was largely gone.

‘There are no leaves. It is crazy. One of the things we loved about St Thomas is that it was so green. And it’s gone,’ Strickling said. ‘It will take years for this community to get back on its feet.’

Shocking footage and pictures taken from a helicopter over St Martin hints that the number could rise significantly.

It is hard to find a single building that hasn’t suffered some kind of damage as a result of the 185mph winds that are crashing their way across the Caribbean at the moment.

Many homes and businesses have been flattened, trees have been felled, and a huge sea surge has shifted tons of sand onto land.

The Dutch government is holding a crisis meeting to discuss its response to the damage inflicted on the Caribbean island of St Martin, a former Dutch colony, by Hurricane Irma.

A Dutch military helicopter filmed severe damage in St Maarten

Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk said early Thursday that ministers would huddle in The Hague to coordinate the aid operation after initial aerial images taken from a navy helicopter showed the extent of damage to the island.

Plasterk told Dutch NOS radio that there is ‘an extreme amount of damage, particularly on St. Maarten.’ He said the government had no confirmed reports yet of casualties, but stressed that communications were proving difficult.

Florida is on high alert for the expected arrival of Hurricane Irma, which continues to tear a deadly path trough the Caribbean, leaving devastation in its wake.

The storm destroyed nearly all buildings on the island of Barbuda on Wednesday, killing a two-year-old child as a family tried to escape, before wreaking havoc on the French territories of St Martin and St Barts, leaving at least seven dead.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK is ‘taking swift action to respond’ to the disaster after speaking to the chief minister of Anguilla, a British overseas territory that was among the first islands to be hit.

Britons in the region have been urged to follow evacuation orders, while states of emergency have been declared in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Florida – amid fears Miami could be struck directly by the hurricane.

On Thursday morning Irma’s eye was just north of the coast of Puerto Rico, lashing the island with heavy rain and high winds and leaving more than 900,000 people without power.

It came less close to the capital San Juan than expected, with its last location about 140 miles north-west of the city.

Irma is moving at around 16mph on a course forecast to take it toward the Bahamas and the British overseas territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

An alert sent by the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies on Grand Turk urged residents near the coasts to take shelter on higher ground, warning the storm surge could raise water levels by 15 to 20 feet above the normal tide.

Some US government personnel have been ordered to leave the Bahamas before the hurricane’s arrival, expected on Friday.

On the US mainland authorities fear the hurricane may slam into the Florida peninsula over the weekend, just days after storm Harvey devastated Texas.

With 1,350 miles of coastline, the most in the continental United States, Florida has roughly 2.5 million homes in hazard zones, more than three times that of any other state, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency data.