Ian shuts down Cuba. The powerful hurricane has left the island completely black-out: it caused a “failure” that blew electricity across the Caribbean island. Now he heads to Florida which fears disaster.
And while the Cuban electricity company works “relentlessly” to reconnect the system, the hurricane is headed north towards the west coast of the US state, on whose peninsula “catastrophic winds” and “extremely dangerous” coastal flooding are expected: the alert of the latest bulletin of National Hurricane Center, the hurricane observation center in the United States couldn’t be clearer. Ian, who is expected to gain strength in the next few hours by becoming category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale (which has 5 levels) by passing over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, is advancing in gusts of 195 km / h and is moving at a speed of about 17 km / h.
The landing is planned in the Tampa Bay region, where more than 3 million people live and which is among the most vulnerable places in the United States for flooding; It has been fairly preserved in recent years but Ian is likely to be the most powerful hurricane since the one that devastated the area in 1921.
The call to heed the evacuation warnings was repeated by local officials but also by US President Joe Biden, who said Ian “could be a very serious hurricane, life threatening and devastating impact”.