Residents of the Turks and Caicos Islands on Thursday hunkered down for Hurricane Irma, which has smashed through a string of Caribbean islands as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, killing at least 14 people en route to Florida.

With winds of around 185 miles per hour (290 km per hour), the storm the size of France has ravaged small islands in the northeast Caribbean in recent days, including Barbuda, Saint Martin and the British and US Virgin Islands, ripping down trees and flattening homes and hospitals.

Winds dipped on Thursday to 175 mph as the Irma soaked the northern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and brought hurricane-force wind to the Turks and Caicos Islands. It remained an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm, the highest designation by the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

    The last 4 days of Hurricane #Irma's eye as seen by the #GOES16 Advanced Baseline Imager. pic.twitter.com/ppht5XoiSe
    - NASA SPoRT (@NASA_SPoRT) September 7, 2017

Irma was about 40 miles (65 km) south of Turks and Caicos and is expected to reach the Bahamas later Thursday, before moving to Cuba and plowing into southern Florida as a very powerful Category 4 on Sunday, with storm surges and flooding due to begin within the next 48 hours.

Across the Caribbean authorities rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of residents and tourists in the path of the storm, while on islands in its wake, shocked locals tried to comprehend the extent of the devastation while simultaneously preparing for another major hurricane, Jose, currently a Category 3 and due to hit the northeastern Caribbean on Saturday.

    It's official: No storm on record, anywhere on the globe, has maintained winds 185mph or above for as long as #Irma https://t.co/z8SBy4xYEi pic.twitter.com/4cvJXDbNud
    - CNN (@CNN) September 7, 2017

It was the first time the Turks and Caicos islands had experienced a Category 5 storm, said Virginia Clerveaux, director of Disaster Management and Emergencies.

"We are expecting inundation from both rainfall as well as storm surge. And we may not be able to come rescue them in a timely manner," she said in comments broadcast on Facebook.

The few tourists who remained on the Turks and Caicos islands were in hotels, as were some locals.

"Right now I'm at the hotel with my family. There are a lot of people in the hotel. It's boarded up," said island resident Sofia Simmons, speaking from the Royal West Indies Hotel on Providenciales island. "Most of our shelters are packed to capacity. We had to open more shelters."

Florida emergency management officials began evacuations, ordering tourists to leave the Keys. Gas shortages in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area worsened on Thursday, with sales up to five times the norm.

In Miami, hundreds of people lined up for bottled water and cars looped around city blocks to get gas in panicked preparations for Irma.

"To the people of Florida, we just want you to protect yourselves, be very vigilant and careful," said US President Donald Trump, who owns the waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida as well as a property on the French side of Saint Martin, an island devastated by the storm.

A mandatory evacuation on Georgia's Atlantic coast was due to begin on Saturday, Governor Nathan Deal said.

Deaths rise

In the US Virgin islands, four people died, a government spokesman said, and a major hospital was badly damaged by the wind. A US amphibious assault ship arrived in the US Virgin Islands on Thursday and sent helicopters for medical evacuations from the destroyed hospital.

Barbuda, where one person died, was reduced "to rubble", according to Prime Minister Gaston Browne. In the British overseas territory of Anguilla another person was killed, while the hospital and airport, power and phone services were damaged, emergency service officials said.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said four bodies were recovered on the tiny French-Dutch island of Saint Martin, which was hit hard.

"It is an enormous disaster. Ninety-five percent of the island is destroyed. I am in shock," Daniel Gibbs, chairman of a local council on Saint Martin, told Radio Caribbean International.

Source: Khaleej Times