At Camp David, Trump With Cabinet to Monitor Hurricane Irma

WHITE HOUSE - U.S. President Donald Trump and his Cabinet are to meet Saturday concerning Hurricane Irma, which is poised to slam into the state of Florida and has already killed at least 21 people in the Caribbean and is causing catastrophic destruction.

“It's a really bad one, but we're prepared at the highest level. Hopefully, everything will be well," Trump, standing on the White House South Lawn, told reporters Friday just before boarding Marine One for the helicopter ride to the Camp David presidential retreat where the Cabinet meeting will occur. 

“This storm has taken lives already,” White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert noted. “Take care of yourself first so you can take care of others.” 

Bossert, speaking during a White House briefing, was asked what is his biggest concern. He replied that “we’re worried about the fuel shortages” amid Florida’s mass evacuation, noting “five or six” oil refineries in Texas are still out of operation from recent Hurricane Harvey.

Acting Deputy FEMA Administrator Kathleen Fox told VOA, "We've got tens of thousands of liters of water, we've got food, we've got cots, we've got medical supplies, prepositioned toddler kits, which includes diapers, formula, those kinds of things.

The National Hurricane Center predicts Irma, with maximum sustained winds of 250 kilometers per hour and still several hundred kilometers west of Cuba on Friday afternoon, will make a turn toward the northwest by late Saturday.

It is forecast to slam into the Florida Keys and the southern Florida peninsula Sunday morning.

Irma was downgraded from a Category 5 to a still-powerful Category 4 hurricane early Friday. Forecasters say the storm, already regarded as the most powerful ever recorded in the Atlantic, is expected to maintain its current level of strength as it approaches the continental United Sates. 

The storm tore through 160-square-kilometer Barbuda, prompting Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda to say the island was now "rubble." 

The prime minister estimates about 95 percent of all the buildings on Barbuda were either destroyed or damaged.

The island nation is now bracing for impact from Category 4 Hurricane Jose.

On the island of St. Martin, shared by France and the Netherlands, there are "scenes of pillaging" as people loot stores and take to the streets in search of food and water, according to Annick Girardin, France's minister for overseas territories.

It could be up to six months before all power is restored on cash-strapped Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, where Irma knocked out power to more than 1 million people. Witnesses say wires are either lying in the streets or dangling from the poles that managed to stay upright.

Irma also lashed Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, with fierce winds and heavy rain, but spared those two countries a direct hit. 

Haitian authorities say Irma still caused mudslides and flooded highways and bridges, though, destroying ramshackle homes. Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is still recovering from a devastating earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew last October.

The U.S. Defense Department has deployed three navy ships, about two dozen aircraft and hundreds of Marines to help with recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

French and Dutch relief is being flown to their territories, and British Prime Minister Teresa May has sent a Royal Navy shipload of military personnel and emergency supplies to British territories in the Caribbean.

Emergency shelters in Florida are accommodating evacuees from the state's most vulnerable areas.

“Let’s hope there’s no hurricane amnesia,” Bossert, at the White House, told reporters, stressing that people in Florida should keep in mind the destruction caused by past storms and heed evacuation orders. 

Florida Governor Rick Scott said all 7,000 Florida National Guard members are being deployed Friday and thousands of power workers are standing by, ready to go to work. 

Noting that Irma is wider than Florida, Scott characterized it as “a catastrophic storm that this state has never seen before.”

The governor warned, “we are running out of time. The storm is almost here.”