This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced he will visit the hurricane-damaged French territories in the Caribbean as the UK government defended its response to the storm.

Macron said he would visit St Martin and announced a doubling of military and police forces to bolster security in the region.



There have been a number of arrests and witnesses in the French island territory have reported looting and violence after the storm that left 60% of homes in St Martin uninhabitable, and killed at least 11 people in St Martin and St Barthélemy (St Barts), both French territories.

Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, said the number of military personnel had been doubled on the Dutch side of the island, St Maarten. Rutte said that to ensure order, security forces were authorised to act with a “firm hand”.

Dutch authorities were evacuating tourists and the injured to Curaçao, where the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, and the interior minister, Ronald Plasterk, were expected to arrive on Monday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman and her two children walk past debris left by Hurricane Irma in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Photograph: Ricardo Arduengo/AP

The British prime minister, Theresa May, has yet to say if she will visit Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands, which were also devastated by the storm.

The British government has faced criticism by residents and visitors in the area who have described “unbelievable” devastation. It has been accused of being slow to evacuate people before the storm.

The premier of the British Virgin Islands, Orlando Smith, has called for greater support from the British government after Irma’s destructive force left the islands in a “critical” state and killed at least five people.

“We are a resilient people but this has shaken us to our core,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A beach littered with rubble in the Baie Nettle area of Marigot on St Martin, devastated by Hurricane Irma. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, defended the UK response to what he called “an unprecedented catastrophe” and said the government would be providing assistance to affected areas “for the long term”.

“I stress that this is a very big consular crisis, and I am confident that we are doing everything we possibly can to help British nationals. But you must understand that there are a million of them affected,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.

Johnson said 700 British troops were in the region, with UK police also arriving. The government has already set aside £32m in aid and will match public donations to the Red Cross appeal.

“We were there as soon as the crisis broke,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense when a hurricane is impending to send in heavy aircraft or to send in ships that are not capable themselves of withstanding the storm.

“In fact the French had to ask us for assistance later on, because we’d got the right sort of kit there.”

He continued: “If you look at what is happening now you can see an unprecedented British effort to deal with what has been an unprecedented catastrophe for the region. We have not had a storm like this since records began in 1850.

“These are British people, these are British overseas territories, and we are going to be there for the long term.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Royal Marines talking to a resident in Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Photograph: Lphoto Joel Rouse/AFP/Getty Images

Irma had crashed through the Caribbean before hitting the US state of Florida.

Four people were killed on the US Virgin Islands, and at least one person in the British overseas territory of Anguilla. Three reportedly died in Puerto Rico and one in Barbuda. Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have been evacuated, and there are fears disease may spread in flooded areas without power, drinking water or basic infrastructure.

The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda said the islands had been levelled by the storm, with 90% destroyed.

Witnesses in Antigua described the scenes as like a “horror movie”.

“We had 40ft containers flying left and right,” ABS TV Antigua reported. “The story you were getting from most of the residents here is that the eye of the storm came just in time. Persons were literally tying themselves to their roofs with ropes to keep them down.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cubans wade through a flooded street in Havana on Sunday. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Havana fared better than expected but the storm surge still inundated two blocks into the Cuban capital, with 11-metre waves crashing over the famous Malecón. Other Cuban regions fared much worse, after Irma made landfall as a category5 storm on Friday, tearing roofs from houses and flooding communities. It was the first category 5 storm to hit Cuba since 1932, but by Sunday tourists in the Varadero area were ready to return to their holiday.

“I think the atmosphere now is relief, knowing it is past and the building is still there and everyone is OK,” Josephine Breslin, a 49-year-old British visitor, told Reuters.

The Varadero photographer Osmel de Armas said the area was a “complete disaster and it will take a great deal of work to get Varadero back on its feet”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman in front of her home flooded by heavy rains brought on by Hurricane Irma in Fort-Liberté, Haiti Photograph: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP

On Friday, more than 24,000 people were evacuated in Dominican Republic, according to local media. More than 10,000 were in shelters, and 17 communities had been isolated by washed-out roads and bridges.

On the other side of the island of Hispaniola, the hurricane skirted Haiti’s northern border, sparing it from mass devastation but still destroying farmland and crops. Less than a year ago, Hurricane Matthew killed more than 540 people and caused US$2.8bn (£2.12bn) of damage.