Hurricane Isaias Kills Four and Cuts Power to 670,000
The first Atlantic hurricane of the season made landfall near Destin in Florida late on Friday as a category two storm with winds of 105mph. Four people are dead, two in Florida and two in Alabama, two of them killed by trees falling on their homes. About 670,000 homes across four states lost power.
Joey Williams told an American broadcaster that his wife was killed when a tree came through their roof as they sheltered, having gone out to photograph the damage: “I was able to squeeze out. My wife didn’t make it.” Alabama’s governor Kay Ivey confirmed two deaths in her state and warned about spinoff tornadoes; Florida’s governor had some 16,000 utility linemen standing by. Outages peaked at roughly 670,000 across Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi at midday on Saturday and had fallen to about 500,000 by the evening. The reason this matters at a British pump is in the energy numbers rather than the weather. Sixty-nine per cent of American Gulf of Mexico oil output and 57% of gas production remained shut in on Saturday, with 113 platforms still evacuated, and the Energy Department has authorised an emergency release of up to four million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. American diesel already averages $6.28 a gallon against $3.68 a year ago. That is a second supply shock in a week in which Washington suspended sanctions on Russian diesel specifically to bring the price down, and in which twelve people were killed at a Gulf airport.