MARCO ISLAND, Fla. _ Florida awakened Monday to a debris-pocked panorama, with millions lacking electricity in steamy heat as Irma _ now downgraded to a tropical storm _ took a parting swipe at a band of north Florida and aimed for Georgia.
As the storm passed, the danger lingered: Storm surges jeopardized cities along Florida's Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and the National Hurricane Center said Irma was still producing some hurricane-force wind gusts after spinning off tornadoes in the state's central core.
Although the storm's raging winds and punishing rains lent it an apocalyptic feel as it unfolded, initial damage assessments appeared significant and widespread, but short of catastrophic.
By 8 a.m. Monday, the storm, still remarkably wide in its radius, had moved about 105 miles north of Tampa, which along with St. Petersburg was spared a direct hit the night before, with the storm passing to their east through inland counties.
As far away as Atlanta, which was earlier placed under its first-ever tropical storm warning, neighboring states were experiencing drenching rains and already weathering Irma's effects as it moved north-northwest at a brisk 18 mph, with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph and higher gusts.
While the seas to Florida's west bent to Irma's will, receding and then rising, the National Hurricane Center also warned of "significant river flooding" for the next five days along the storm track. Between eight and 15 inches of rain was forecast for southern Georgia, and in northeast Florida, a flash flood emergency was issued for downtown Jacksonville, at the mouth of the St. John's River.
Just outside Orlando, more than 120 homes were ordered emptied as floodwaters rose, and firefighters staged boat rescues for some. Another classic Florida hazard struck nearby: A 60-foot sinkhole abruptly gaped beneath an apartment building. No injuries were reported, the Associated Press said.
In the history of record-keeping, the U.S. mainland has never before suffered two Category 4 hurricanes in the span of a year, never mind a little over two weeks. Coming on the heels of Hurricane Harvey's devastation in Texas, Irma was expected to be one of the country's most expensive weather disasters ever, if not the most.
Across Florida, the damage was on a scale both imposing and intimate, doing damage not only to large-scale infrastructure but also ravaging homes and possessions infused with memories of the past and dreams for the future.
As Monday dawned, more than 155,000 people statewide were still in shelters, with many people heading out at first light to check on damages.
At the Riverwood Estates mobile home park in Naples, on the Gulf Coast, Terry Thompson, 65, was among those surveying what the storm had wrought. He rode out the storm with his dog in his mobile home, which he'd only moved into two weeks earlier.
His neighbor's carport roof had flown off and smacked into his wife's car, and tree branches and debris littered the streets of the complex.
"There's a lot of cleanup," he said. But his car and boat were intact.
With more than 5.7 million Floridians lacking power _ six in 10 of utility customers _ restoring electricity was an urgent priority. Outages were spreading to Georgia, with some 17,000 people without electricity in Savannah.
After making landfall early Sunday in the Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane, the storm spent Sunday chewing and churning its way up much of the Gulf Coast, but also paralyzing Miami, the normally buzzing metropolis on the other side of the peninsula. Most people were trapped indoors all day by wind and rain, while floodwaters rose in downtown streets.
Miami International Airport, the scene of a frantic exodus in the days before the storm struck, said it would be closed Monday, with limited flights beginning Tuesday. Hundreds of flights were canceled over the weekend. The airport's director, Emilio Gonzalez, tweeted that the airport, hit by gusts of nearly 100 mph, "sustained significant water damage throughout."
