In the hard-hit Florida Keys, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, said that about one-quarter of the houses were destroyed by the storm, and another 65 percent suffered major damage.
But officials of Monroe County, which includes the Keys, held back from offering such a specific assessment. “It is too early to put percentages or dollar figures to damage until we get into the neighborhoods,” the county commissioner, Heather Carruthers, said in a statement. “Things look real damaged from the air. But when you clear the trees and all the debris, it’s not much damage to the houses.”
Officials reopened part of the sole highway linking the islands, U.S. 1, but were not yet allowing traffic to the more distant islands in the chain. Driving south and west from Key Largo, the visible damage from the storm grew progressively more severe. The roadside was littered with boats, appliances, dock sections and other debris. Emergency workers marked the doors of empty houses with the date and time they were checked for casualties.
At mile marker 74 on Lower Matecumbe Key, where the open section ended, military Humvees could be seen moving further south to join the federal state and local authorities trying to assess the damage and provide relief.
Before it reached Florida, Hurricane Irma cut a destructive swath through the Leeward Islands. President Emmanuel Macron of France arrived in the Caribbean on Tuesday to assess the damage to the French territories in the storm’s path, especially St. Martin and St. Barthélemy, where roofs were torn from houses and water and power systems were knocked out.
“All of France stands side by side with those who lost everything — some even lost their loved ones,” he said at the airport at Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, the hub for French relief operations, which were initially hampered by what the Red Cross called “major security problems” in the stricken islands. Mr. Macron promised government support for rebuilding efforts: “St. Martin will be reborn. I am committed.”
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