The backdrop of a summer of civil unrest in America’s largest cities and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic looms large as motivated voters prepare to submit their ballots for president in less than two weeks.

Police departments – many of which saw days, weeks, and even monthslong anti-police brutality protests and riots this summer – said they are hoping for the best when voters hit the polls on Nov. 3, but are also preparing for the worst in the days before and after.

New York police take security measures as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives to vote at the Beckman Hill International School in New York City on Nov. 8, 2016. (Photo by Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

“There is no secret that this election is more contentious than in years’ past,” said New York Police Department’s Chief of Department, Terence Monahan, during a Tuesday press conference covering election preparedness. The NYPD is one of many departments throughout the country with a plan in case any protests devolve into criminal activity.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION COMES DOWN TO THESE 9 STATES

Chicago, much like New York City, has seen spurts of civil unrest, including devastating looting downtown. Its police department is now working with several city agencies in a coordinated effort to be prepared for any fallout, whether at the polls or on the streets, during the election period.

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a recent news conference that police and emergency officials are training to make sure they’re ready “regardless of whatever scenario happens on Election Day.”

Police officers inspect a damaged Best Buy store in Chicago after parts of the city suffered from widespread looting and vandalism over the summer. (Getty Images)

“Many cities across the country are doing similar planning,” he said last week. “We are all in conversations with our counterparts across the country about what we might expect, but everything is uncertain, and so we’re trying as best we can to anticipate any hazard that might happen, including a weather hazard, snow might happen in our city, along with anything related to protests, embedded agitators that might loot or cause violence or destroy property.”

Even without the prevalent unrest in certain parts of the country, this year’s election will nonetheless look different. People have the option of voting early and by mail, and officials anticipate clear results might take days, if not weeks.

Here are what some police departments in big cities have to say about their plans to best ensure every American stays safe before, during, and after Election Day.

MIAMI

Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina told Fox News this week that it was “difficult to tell” what kind of unrest – if any – the city will face in the days leading up to the election.

“We’re going to have more people working, a bigger, more robust uniformed presence. And then we’re going to have some undercover officers that will go by polling places,” he said.

Colina said the city will also be prepared with groups of officers who could mobilize at short notice, “especially those groups that want to create havoc.”

He told Fox News he believes the protests could look different depending on who is ultimately elected president.

“This state [Florida] is up for grabs, according to the polls. This is a state that both candidates covet, obviously, and that’s always been the case,” he said. “I can’t help but wonder that if that’s not going to inspire some fringe groups to want to do their part to win it for one or the other. And that’s where it gets a little dangerous because people, you know, they become extreme.”

His concerns, he said, are not based on any credible threats, but he plans to be ready, nonetheless.

“I know that these kinds of things exist, right? Where people want to come out and they want to create an issue and then blame it on the other. I mean, we’ve seen that we’ve seen that. So I’m hoping that that’s not the case again,” Colina said. “Again, I think we’re gonna be fine, but I recognize that, certainly, that could happen because this state is up for grabs.”

City of Miami police officers gear up as they prepare for any problems with protesters Sunday, May 31, 2020, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

During a press conference on Monday, Colina said the department had canceled vacation days and days off during the election period and will deploy additional officers. The department has also instructed every sworn officer, whether assigned to a desk job or patrol duty, to bring their uniform to work in case a greater police presence is needed.

“The truth is, this is a very contentious election cycle. Unlike we haven’t seen in many, many years,” he said during the news conference. “We have a very savvy community here who understands that some people may want to take actions into their own hands and try to and swing some votes. We just want to make sure that we don’t allow that to take place.”

NEW YORK CITY

Said to be the largest police force in the nation, the NYPD is directing its officers to be “prepared for deployment” beginning Oct. 26, as it braces for increasing protests in the lead-up to and following Election Day 2020, according to an internal memo from Oct. 13 obtained by Fox News.

NYPD brass are planning for potential civil unrest as New York City and the nation begin a contentious series of weeks, starting with the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and coupled with the upcoming presidential election, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in the internal announcement.

“This November 3rd will be the (sic) one of the most highly contested presidential elections in the modern era,” Shea wrote, noting that Barrett’s confirmation hearing was set to begin at the same time of the missive’s release. “Accordingly, we should anticipate and prepare for protests growing in size, frequency, and intensity leading up to the election and likely into the year 2021.”

Shea also noted that the election winner “may not be decided for several weeks,” and the confirmation hearing was also expected to continue for weeks.

During an interview later that day, Shea told local news station NY1 that the department wanted to be ready for anything.

A New York City police officer stands guard outside a polling station in a public school Nov. 2, 2010 in New York.  (DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)

“It would be nice if we had an uneventful fall season, but this is 2020,” he said during the Oct. 13 interview. “It’s really all-hands-on-deck across the NYPD and this is really about, listen everyone is well aware of the climate right now in this country, certainly here in this city and the election coming up and it’s our job to prepare for the worst and hopefully it’s not needed.”

Accordingly, the NYPD has instructed hundreds of officers to come to work in uniform and ready for duty beginning on Oct. 26, Monahan said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

PORTLAND

Portland police officers push protesters past a dumpster fire during a dispersal from in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in the early morning on August 21, 2020 in Portland, Ore. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

No stranger to violent protests that have, at times, devolved into riots, Portland Police Bureau is working with Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and will be upping law enforcement staffing during and following the election period “as a precaution,” the department said in a press release last week.

“In the past, some individuals and groups have gathered and marched following the election results, both in celebration and sometimes because they are angered or upset. In some instances, significant damage was done to local businesses, which did not change the election outcome, but hurt our community members,” the release states. “While we promote and support the exercise of the First Amendment rights to assemble and engage in free speech, engagement in criminal activity will not be tolerated.”

PPB officials said they will not tolerate any demonstrators blocking pedestrian and vehicular traffic, lighting fires, “vandalizing and damaging property,” illegal use of weapons and violence.

“We’re just trying to prepare and coordinate to increase safety during that time,” Officer Derek Carmon, a PPB spokesperson, told Fox News on Monday. “We’ve seen in the past where people come out because they’re either excited about the election results or they’re completely unhappy with the election results and they come down causing damage and things like that in the past. So we’re just trying to be prepared for that by having more officers available.”

Carmon said the department is not allowing officers to take any vacation days during and in the days following the election period, but had not established specific requirements of personnel during that time.

PPB Chief Chuck Lovell said in a prepared statement that this election season “has increased fear and uncertainty for many of our community members.”

“We want our community to know we are prioritizing public safety by adding resources and collaboration during this important time. We ask for the public to help us by reporting criminal activity, staying informed, and engaging in lawful activities. Together, we can achieve a safe election season in Portland,” Lovell said.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Oregon city’s election-related safety and security measures can visit the Multnomah County Elections website.

SEATTLE

In gearing up for the election period, Seattle Police Department set a limit to the time off allowed for personnel around the time of Election Day “to ensure the department is able to adequately provide public safety services at any events, gatherings or demonstrations related to the election,” said SPD spokesperson Sgt. Randall Huserik.

Huserik also said SPD recently launched its Community Response Group, to “dynamically deploy to unplanned large-scale events and ensure SPD is able to quickly respond to 911 emergencies,” in case such a response is needed.

ORLANDO

Though not particularly known for experiencing unrest in recent months, Orlando Police Department officials are working with the Supervisor of Elections office to ensure the election period goes smoothly, Sgt. David Baker, a spokesperson for OPD told Fox News.

“The Supervisor of Elections does have a protocol in place to contact law enforcement if individuals are disruptive and unruly and violating Florida statutes related to voting, including the 150-foot no-solicitation zone near the entrance of polling places,” Baker wrote in an emailed statement.

Additional information was not provided.

MINNEAPOLIS

In this May 29, 2020, photo, a check-cashing business burns during protests in Minneapolis. Protests continued following the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Minneapolis is also no stranger to civil unrest, which rocked the city in the wake of the alleged police-related death of local resident, George Floyd. Floyd, a Black man, died at the end of May after a White police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, despite his shouts that he couldn’t breathe. Days of protests and destruction in the city followed.

Minneapolis Police Department’s public information officer, John Elder, said in an email to Fox News the department continues to “plan for the worst and hope for the best.”

“We are aware of current and future possible flashpoints that present challenges on both a local and national level,” Elder said. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners, local, regionally, and federally in order to properly respond to situations as they unfold.  Additionally, we are keeping lines of communication open with the communities we serve and working with everyone we can to ensure 1st Amendment rights are preserved and providing a safe environment for all.”

Elder could not provide any more specific details regarding the department’s plans.

CHICAGO

Superintendent David Brown said during a press conference earlier this month that the police department and several other city agencies have scheduled several tabletop exercises in the lead-up to Election Day to ensure officials were prepared for whatever might happen.

The department, he said, was “making sure that we are in our neighborhoods in a very strong posture to make sure our, not only our First Amendment, but that our assets, that our critical infrastructure, that our retail corridors are all protected from any wrongdoers.”

Just months ago, caravans of looters descended upon Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, where they looted and destroyed property just hours after allegedly false information about a police-involved shooting spread. The looters coordinated their efforts through social media, Brown said at the time.

The police department has now prepared for similar instances, as well as any other election-related crimes, by assigning specific groups to oversee protests and protect “critical infrastructure,” Brown said at last week’s election-related press conference.

CPD has also extended certain officers’ shifts and canceled the days off for those members who have been assigned to the specific teams, he said.

Brown noted that he believed there was a “coordinated effort” during summer protests “to embed agitators” within the otherwise peaceful demonstrations. He’s planning, he said, in case that’s also a feature of election-related protests.

“So from those lessons learned from over the summer, we are planning for that to be a feature of peaceful protests: a slight embedment of people who have no intention of protesting but every intention of committing crime,” Brown said. “So, instead of being caught off-guard we are planning for that to happen and we have operations in place to ensure that they don’t destroy property, that they don’t cause any further violence and that they’re held accountable.”

PHILADELPHIA

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“This has turned into from a rescue to a recovery operation,” Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, a public information officer for the Miami Dade Police Department, told reporters early Friday morning.

Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Dave Downey had said Thursday night his crew was still using high-tech listening devices, trained sniffing dogs and search cameras in a race to find anyone still alive.

In addition to the six people who were killed, at least nine others were injured and taken to local hospitals; officials at one point said 10 were injured.

As Florida authorities work to identify the people who died in Thursday’s catastrophic collapse, state and federal investigators will begin the task of figuring out how and why the five-day-old span failed.

The $14.2 million pedestrian bridge was supposed to open in 2019 as a safe way for students to cross the busy road beneath. It linked the community of Sweetwater with the campus of Florida International University.

• Questions raised over construction of pedestrian bridge that collapsed at FIU
• Witnesses describe hearing victims trapped in Miami bridge collapse

Florida Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio attended an evening briefing.

Rubio said the public and the families of the dead and injured deserve to know “what went wrong.”

Scott added that an investigation will get to the bottom of “why this happened and what happened.” He said if anyone did anything wrong, “we will hold them accountable.”

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt III said a team of specialists planned to begin its investigation Friday morning.

Rubio, who is an adjunct professor at the school, noted the pedestrian bridge was intended to be an innovative and “one-of-a-kind engineering design.”

An accelerated construction method was supposed to reduce risks to workers and pedestrians and minimize traffic disruption, the university said. The school has long been interested in this kind of bridge design; in 2010, it opened “The ABC (accelerated bridge construction) Center,” to help bridge professionals. Other universities around the country partnered with FIU to “provide the transportation industry with the tools needed to effectively and economically utilize the principles of ABC to enhance mobility and safety, and produce safe, environmentally friendly, long-lasting bridges.”

Renderings showed a tall, off-center tower with cables attached to the walkway to support it. When the bridge collapsed, the main tower had not yet been installed, and it was unclear what the builders were using as temporary supports.

The project was a collaboration between MCM Construction, a Miami-based contractor, and Figg Bridge Design, based in Tallahassee. Figg is responsible for the iconic Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay.

Figg issued a statement Thursday saying the company was “stunned” by the collapse and promising to cooperate with investigations.

“In our 40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before,” the company’s statement said. “Our entire team mourns the loss of life and injuries associated with this devastating tragedy, and our prayers go out to all involved.”

MCM Construction Management, which was building the bridge, posted a message on the company’s Facebook page promising “a full investigation to determine exactly what went wrong.”

Robert Bea, a professor of engineering and construction management at the University of California, Berkeley, said it was too early to know exactly what happened, but the decision to use what the bridge builders called an “innovative installation” was risky, especially because the bridge spanned a heavily traveled thoroughfare.

“Innovations take a design firm into an area where they don’t have applicable experience, and then we have another unexpected failure on our hands,” Bea said after reviewing the bridge’s design and photos of the collapse.

The FIU community, along with Sweetwater and county officials, held a “bridge watch party” March 10. That’s when the span was lifted from its temporary supports, rotated 90 degrees across an eight-lane thoroughfare and lowered into its permanent position over the busy road.

FIU President Mark Rosenberg said during a news conference that tests were being done on Thursday. Authorities said two construction workers were on the bridge when it collapsed; it’s unclear what the tests were or if they contributed to the failure.

“This bridge was about goodness, not sadness,” Rosenberg said. “Now we’re feeling immense sadness, uncontrollable sadness. And our hearts go out to all those affected, their friends and their families. We’re committed to assist in all efforts necessary, and our hope is that this sadness can galvanize the entire community to stay the course, a course of goodness, of hope, of opportunity.”

Mayor Orlando Lopez of Sweetwater, Florida, said he was notified of the bridge collapse by a local business owner who called him with the devastating news.

“My heart stopped. I could hear the crackle in his voice as he explained to me that the bridge collapsed and there are vehicles trapped under it. I couldn’t believe that this very bridge that was being erected to provide safe transfer between students of FIU to the city of Sweetwater actually collapsed. It is a very tragic day.”

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-bridge-collapse-death-toll-6-2018-03-16-live-updates/

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As of 10 a.m., the glamorous Florida city was 60 hours from feeling the first effects of a killer storm that has already been blamed for nine deaths across a string of islands and has left more than a million people in Puerto Rico in the dark, NBC News’ Weather Unit warned.

“We likely will not know the fate of Miami until Irma turns north either Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening,” the meteorologists said in an update.

The good news is that Irma “has peaked in intensity” and likely to weaken very slowly over the next four days, they said.

But even a slightly weaker Irma could do serious damage to Miami and lash the low-lying city with 129 mph winds and gusts of up to 159 mph.

“Miami has no choice but to prepare for a strong Category 4 hurricane,” the NBC meteorologists warned. “Most of the damage in South Florida is expected from the storm surge and winds.”

And when Irma is done with Miami, it is expected to make landfall late Monday or early Tuesday further north in Georgia and South Carolina, the NBC forecasters said. The governors of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina have declared states of emergency.

The dire forecast came after Irma battered the tiny island of Barbuda and left thousands homeless on the island territories of St. Bart and St. Martin, where local officials said about 95 percent of the island was completely demolished after Wednesday’s thrashing by the Category 5 storm.

“If you’re told to evacuate, get out quickly,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott warned. “Based on what we now know, Miami-Dade will have major hurricane impacts with deadly storm surge, deadly storm surge and life-threatening winds.”

Some 31,000 people have already fled the Florida Keys, which will start feeling the sting of Irma as early as Friday night, Scott said. And while South Florida is in Irma’s bull’s-eye right now, the whole state is in danger.

“Look at the size of this storm,” Scott said. “It’s huge. It’s wider that our entire state and could cause major and life-threatening impacts on both costs. Coast to coast.”

Scott invoked the memory of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm that struck 25 years ago, killing 44 people and doing more than an adjusted $47.8 billion in damage just in the Sunshine State alone. It nearly wiped the city of Homestead off the map.

“This is much worse and more devastating on its current path,” Scott said.

Florida is working to get more fuel into the state as many areas are running low on gas. About 43% of gas stations in Miami-Fort Lauderdale are without fuel, according to GasBuddy.

“We know fuel is very important. And we’re absolutely devoting every state resource to addressing this and we’re talking to the federal government about their support,” Scott said.

In Washington, President Donald Trump said “Florida is as well prepared as you can be for something like this and we’ll see what happens.”

“We are with the people of Florida,” added the president, whose Mar-a-Lago mansion is located in Palm Beach.

Video obtained by NASA had the eye of Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, passing just to the north of the Dominican Republic on Thursday morning.

“Extremely dangerous Hurricane Irma heading for the Turks and Caicos islands,” the National Hurricane Center warned in an all caps bulletin issued at 11 a.m.. “Hurricane and storm surge watch are in effect for portions of South Florida and the Florida Keys.”

Irma largely spared Puerto Rico, hitting the island with a glancing blow. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said they were starting the arduous task of assessing damage to the island and restoring power to its hardest hit areas.

Rosselló also warned residents that Puerto Rico still faces possible flash flooding and up to eight inches more rain through Saturday that will complicate the recovery on an island where bent trees, downed light posts and blocked roadways are now a common sight.

“Our objective was and is to save lives,” Rosselló said. “Now comes the evaluation of the damages and reconstruction.”

Over in the French Caribbean territories of St. Bart and St. Martin, stunned survivors were literally picking up the pieces.

“It is an enormous disaster … I am in shock,” Daniel Gibbs, chairman of a local council on St. Martin, told Radio Caribbean International.

At least eight people were killed and 23 more were injured by the storm, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.

“It’s a tragedy, we’ll need to rebuild both islands,” he told French radio France Info. “Most of the schools have been destroyed.”

The Dutch side of St. Martin was also badly damaged. The Dutch government reported it was dispatching 100 soldiers and plane loads of food and water to the island.

One death was reported in the tiny island of Barbuba, where nearly every building was damaged when Irma’s core crossed almost directly over it early Wednesday. Some 60 percent of its roughly 1,400 residents were left homeless, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told The Associated Press.

Irma also raked through the British Virgin Islands. In London, Queen Elizabeth released a statement stating that she and Prince Philip were “shocked and saddened by the reports of the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hurricane-irma/hurricane-irma-has-miami-its-sights-after-cutting-deadly-swath-n799476

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The monster storm in the Atlantic just broke the record for the longest-lived storm with winds of 185 miles per hour or greater, beating out Super Typhoon Haiyan for the title. Such records date back to the dawn of the satellite era in 1966.

The record-shattering storm is churning toward the southeastern Bahamas and Turks and Caicos islands on Thursday, where it threatens to bring a devastating 15 to 20-foot storm surge above normal tide levels. Irma — which is a Category 5 storm as of Thursday afternoon — has its sights set on the extremely vulnerable Southeast U.S., however, with the destruction it has wrought in the northern Lesser Antilles and Caribbean serving as an example of what it is capable of.

The current forecast track takes Irma across the southeast Bahamas on Thursday to a position south-southeast of Florida on Friday, before turning the storm sharply to the north-northeast on Saturday, in response to winds flowing around a dip in the jet stream across the eastern U.S.

Where that turn occurs is going to prove pivotal to the forecast, and more importantly to people’s lives in southern Florida, since a later turn means a landfalling storm in the Sunshine State, whereas an early turn could see the worst of the storm’s winds and waves remaining offshore.

Miami, in particular, could see a devastating hit from Hurricane Irma. The last major hurricane to hit there was Hurricane Andrew in 1992. That storm, also a Category 5, wiped out communities to the south of the city, but spared the priciest real estate along Miami Beach and in downtown due to its compact wind field and track across the southern part of Miami-Dade County.

Hurricane Irma is a larger and more powerful storm than Andrew was, and it could become the storm that current residents of Miami, now a booming gateway to Latin America, have thought would never come.

Computer model projections and the official forecast from the National Hurricane Center show that Hurricane Irma is likely to come near or over Miami and Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday night into Sunday. The exact path of the storm’s center will be crucially important, since the most powerful winds and most damaging storm surge flooding will be generated by the right side, or eastern flank of the storm.

If a Category 4 or 5 Hurricane Irma were to make landfall in southern Florida and track just to the west of Miami, it would bring destructive, onshore winds to luxury high-rise condo buildings situated at the water’s edge, flooding them from below, and shredding them from the top down.

Tropical storm force winds are expected to spread over Florida from south to north beginning on Saturday morning, with hurricane force winds of 75 miles per hour or greater arriving soon after that. The storm has an unusually expansive wind field, making the track of the center of the storm less relevant than usual, since even an offshore track by 20 miles or so would still bring a punishing onslaught of high winds to the eastern coast of the state.

While Florida has the strictest building codes in the country, they’ve never been tested in a city the size of Miami, and most residents of the city have never been through a powerful hurricane before.

In recent years, a real estate boom has pushed expensive property closer and closer to the ocean’s edge, making the area extremely vulnerable to storm surge flooding, which is worsened by global warming-related sea level rise.

The population of Miami-Dade County, an east coast county that includes Miami, shot up by around 700,000 people since 1992, an increase of about 35 percent. The population in Broward County, which borders Dade County to the north, increased from 1.3 million in 1992 to 1.9 million in 2016, a change of 46 percent.

Few of these new arrivals have ever experienced a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, since the last Category 4 storm to hit Florida was Charley, in 2004. That storm made landfall on the other side of the state, just north of Tampa, sparing the Miami area from its strongest winds.

Since the year 2000, more than 2 million new homes have been built in Florida, with about half of them constructed in the region from Tampa to Miami, according to Steve Bowen, a meteorologist at the insurance company Aon Benfield.

In Miami, many of the new homes have been in the form of expensive high-rise condominiums. High-rise buildings can be death traps in intense hurricanes, since they expose the upper floors to far stronger winds than the lower levels, in some cases by a whole Saffir-Simpson category difference, meaning that top floors could experience a Category 5 storm while lower levels see Category 4 wind speeds.

“Given that the region from the I-4 Corridor (Tampa & Orlando) to Miami has seen more than one million new properties in less than two decades highlights that there is simply more risk of things being damaged,” Bowen said in a Twitter message.

“There are further concerns that many residents in this part of the state are new and have never experienced a major hurricane before,” he said.

“The sad reality is that increased exposure, increased wealth and major hurricane strength storms are a bad combination — and leads to a likelihood of greater future losses.”

According to Climate Central, a nonprofit climate research and communications group, 85,000 people in Miami-Dade County alone live below 3 feet above sea level. That area includes a whopping $22 billion in property. To put this in context, in 2005, county recorded a flood that reached 5.8 feet above sea level. And a storm surge from Hurricane Irma could conceivably produce a flood far higher than that.

In a report released in 2016, Climate Central found that Miami-Dade County has already seen about 5 inches of sea level rise during the past 34 years, which means storm surges have a higher floor to launch from, like a basketball player dunking a ball from a rising court.

Florida as a whole is ground zero for America’s coming reckoning with sea level rise and repetitive, astronomically expensive coastal flood disasters.

“Irma looks like it could be a human-made catastrophe in many dimensions,” said Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level rise and climate impacts at Climate Central. “We have built a great metropolitan region in the middle of a hurricane high risk and flood zone, and have been continued to build it up even as sea levels rise because of human activity.”

“At the same time,” he said, “climate change is pointing us to more intense hurricanes.”

Climate Central’s research has shown that across Florida a staggering $145 billion in property value, and 300,000 homes, sits on land that’s less than 3 feet above sea level. This jumps to $544 billion and 1.4 million homes constructed on land under 6 feet. Storm surge flooding could easily exceed these heights above normal tide levels.

Broader East Coast Threat
Hurricane Irma is also a growing threat to the rest of the Florida coastline, particularly the east coast, as well as coastal Georgia and the Carolinas. In some ways, recent computer model guidance shows a track resembling Hurricane Matthew, which never made landfall in Florida last year, but damaged Cape Canaveral and areas near Jacksonville as the storm’s eye wall, where a hurricane’s highest winds are located, wobbled ashore.

Had the center of that storm moved about 30 miles to the west, the damage would have been far more severe. It’s unclear if Florida will get lucky a second year in a row, however.

The storm is currently projected to move into northeastern coastal Georgia and southern South Carolina by early next week. These areas are also vulnerable to storm surge flooding, which is exacerbated by sea level rise. Savannah, Georgia, in particular is susceptible to such a hazard, as is Charleston, South Carolina.

However, according to Strauss, Miami stands out for its damage potential from Hurricane Irma.

“Every low-lying coastal city on the US Gulf and Atlantic coasts is in its own way vulnerable. What really distinguishes South Florida is its really high concentration of population and economic activity and value. We’re pouring resources into a place that faces significant annual risks from hurricanes today, and significant long-term risks from sea level rise.”

Sea level rise is not a distant threat for Charleston and Miami. It has already caused both cities to regularly experience coastal flooding on fair weather days during astronomically high tides.

However, Hurricane Irma will be anything but a fair weather day.

Source: http://mashable.com/2017/09/07/hurricane-irma-worst-nightmare-for-miami-charleston/#dOy_uH.12EqF

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