Mandatory evacuations have been announced for cities south of Lake Okeechobee, the large inland freshwater lake west of West Palm Beach in Florida, in expectation of Hurricane Irma‘s arrival.
Vice Mayor Melissa McKinley, who represents the Glades community, including the cities of Belle Glade, South Bay and Pahokee, told a Palm Beach County news conference Thursday evening that following “extensive conversations” with emergency management teams and experts, and the “shift of the storm a little bit to the west,” the governor’s office will be issuing mandatory evacuations for cities south of the lake.
— Palm Beach County (@pbcgov) September 7, 2017
McKinley described the decision to issue evacuations—which will go from Lake Harbor to Canal Point and extend over to Lake Port over in Hendry County—as an “overabundance of caution.”
Officials from other areas in the U.S. that lie in Hurricane Irma’s potential path have ordered evacuations and issued states of emergency, including in Broward Country, which ordered an evacuation for low-lying areas, the barrier islands, mobile homes and space east of the Federal Highway from Thursday at noon, and Miami-Dade County, which ordered evacuations for zones A and B along the water from 7 a.m. on Thursday. Georgia, North and South Carolina have also announced evacuations ahead of Hurricane Irma.
Here are all the Hurricane Irma evacuation zones announced as of Friday morning.