Irma, a Category 5 storm packing winds of up to 185 miles an hour, first made landfall at 2 a.m. on Barbuda, and later in the morning passed directly over St. Martin, the National Hurricane Center reported. There were reports of flooding, major damage to buildings, and severed electricity and phone service on those islands and Saint Barthélemy and Anguilla.
The four “most durable” buildings on St. Martin were destroyed, the French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said at a cabinet meeting in Paris, “which means that in all likelihood the more rustic buildings are probably totally or partially destroyed.”
At 11 a.m., the eye of the storm was 65 miles east-southeast of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, the Hurricane Center said. The hurricane was projected to make a direct hit on that island chain on Wednesday afternoon, before skirting the northeast corner of Puerto Rico.
Devastating storm surges were expected to put parts of Turks and Caicos and the southern islands of the Bahamas 15 to 20 feet underwater on Thursday.
The storm is one of the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the center and to Bryan Norcross, a hurricane specialist at the Weather Channel. There have been, however, storms with comparable winds in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, where warm waters can fuel particularly dangerous hurricanes.
Late Tuesday, wind gusts of around 50 miles an hour arrived in Antigua and Barbuda but picked up significant strength as the center of the storm swirled several dozen miles offshore. The authorities cut off power on those islands before midnight, forcing many residents to listen to the latest forecasts on transistor radios in the darkness.
Residents throughout the Caribbean scrambled on Tuesday to rush out of possible flood zones, stock up on water, food and gas, shutter their homes and brace for what is now, and could remain, a Category 5 hurricane. On Antigua, many residents were spending the night in nearly 40 shelters because of concerns that their homes, even when boarded up, would topple in the destructive winds.
“We have to prepare for an event that we have never experienced here,” Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico said earlier on Tuesday, calling the hurricane’s arrival imminent and its potential catastrophic.
Irma threatens havoc and widespread destruction across Puerto Rico, a United States territory of 3.4 million people, the island of Hispaniola (home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the United States Virgin Islands, among others. Cuba is also threatened.
President Trump declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, Florida and the United States Virgin Islands on Tuesday.
With Harvey’s destruction still fresh on people’s minds, Florida hustled into action. Gov. Rick Scott activated the state National Guard to help with hurricane preparations, and he suspended highway tolls. On Monday, the governor declared a state of emergency and spoke with Mr. Trump, who offered “the full resources of the federal government,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter.