FORT: Hurricane Irma lost some strength as it pounded southern Florida on Sunday afternoon, but forecasts warned it would remain a powerful storm as it flooded Miami streets and knocked out power to about 2 million homes and businesses.

All of southern Florida was feeling the effects of the storm creeping towards the shore, with at least one man killed, a woman forced to deliver her own baby, apartment towers swaying in high winds and trees uprooted.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm had maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometres per hour, dropping it to a Category 3, the midpoint of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

Tampa and Hurricane Bays saw extraordinarily low tides, with sea life visible and boats grounded, though forecasters warned the storm would soon drive those waters back in with storm surges of up to 15 feet (4.6 metres) along the state’s western Gulf Coast.

Small white-capped waves could be seen in flooded streets between Miami office towers.

Irma had been one of the most powerful hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic, killing 28 people in the Caribbean and pummelling Cuba with 36-foot (11 metres) waves on Sunday. Its core was located about 48 kilometres south of Naples by 2pm ET (1800 GMT) and was expected to move along or over Florida’s western coast through the afternoon and evening.

Some 6.5 million people, about a third of the state’s population, had been ordered to evacuate southern Florida.

“This is a life-threatening situation,” Governor Rick Scott told a press conference.

Tornadoes were also spotted through the region.

Irma is expected to cause billions of dollars in damage to the third-most-populous US state, a major tourism hub with an economy that generates about 5 per cent of US gross domestic product.

About 2 million Florida homes and businesses had lost power, according to Florida Power & Light and other utilities.

The storm killed 24 as it raged through the Caribbean. It has already claimed at least one life in Florida, a man found dead in his pickup truck, which had crashed into a tree in high winds.

Miami streets flooded

The storm winds downed at least one construction crane and shook tall buildings in Miami, which was about 160 kilometres from Irma’s core.

Deme Lomas, who owns Miami restaurant Niu Kitchen, said he saw a crane torn apart by winds and dangling from the top of a building.

“We feel the building swaying all the time,” Lomas said in a phone interview from his 35th-floor apartment. “It’s like being on a ship.” Waves poured over a Miami seawall, flooding streets waist-deep in places around Brickell Avenue which runs a couple of blocks from the waterfront through the financial district and past consulates. High rise apartment buildings were left standing like islands in the flood.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2017