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Parts of the Florida Keys, the low-lying islands which bore the brunt of Hurricane Irma when the category-four storm struck on Sunday, are to re-open.

Entry is being restricted to residents and business owners as work continues to clear roads and check the state of bridges linking the islands.

Some 60% of homes in the state are still without power.

Irma, which has since rapidly weakened, is being linked to 10 deaths in the United States.

Six people died in Florida, three in Georgia and one in South Carolina.

The storm also left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean, where at least 37 people were killed.

French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived to see the storm damage for himself, while the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, is heading to the British Virgin Islands.

Both France and Britain have been criticised for not doing enough to help their nationals in overseas territories affected by the hurricane.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander spent Monday night on the Dutch side of St Martin, an island shared between France and the Netherlands.

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“Even from the plane I saw something I have never seen before,” the Dutch royal told the NOS public newscaster. “I have seen proper war as well as natural disasters before, but I’ve never seen anything like this”.

“Everywhere you look there’s devastation, you see the collapse,” he added.

‘It’s horrible’

Florida Governor Rick Scott used the same word – “devastation” – after flying over the Keys on Monday.

“I just hope everybody survived,” he said. “It’s horrible what we saw. Especially for the Keys, it’s going to be a long road.

“We saw a lot of boats washed ashore and we saw any, basically, any trailer park there overturned.”

Thousands of people are believed to have ignored calls to evacuate last week, and clung on in the dangerously exposed islands during the storm.

However, Governor Scott added: “I didn’t see the damage I thought I would see.” Storm surges had turned out to be “not as bad as we thought”, he said.

Teams are still working to clear Highway 1, the road connecting most of the inhabited islands, and bridge inspections are continuing.

People with authorisation are being allowed into the towns of Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada from 07:00 (11:00 GMT), the authorities in Monroe Country said.

They were warned that services on the islands were limited: most areas were still without power and water, mobile phone signals were patchy and most petrol stations were still closed.

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has arrived off Florida and other navy ships are due in the area on Tuesday to help distribute food to the Keys and evacuate residents.

Relief in Miami

Other parts of the state escaped the storm lightly compared to the Caribbean islands.

“The storm surge flooding in Miami is a mere fraction of what would have happened if the core of the storm had been further east,” Rick Knabb, former director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a tweet.

Miami’s Mayor, Carlos Gimenez, was relieved the damage was no worse.

“We were spared the brunt of this storm,” he said. “We came out much better than other parts of the state and we have to thank God for that.”

Returning to her home in Miami’s Little Haiti neighbourhood, evacuee Melida Hernandez, 67, found her home split down the middle by a tree.

“I wanted to cry, but this is what it is, this is life,” she told Reuters news agency.

President Donald Trump has released emergency federal aid for Florida, describing the hurricane as a “big monster”.

The storm was downgraded as it moved north towards Atlanta, Georgia, with maximum sustained winds of 35mph (56km/h) recorded, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement.

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Which areas were hit before Florida?

Irma has been the most powerful Atlantic storm in a decade, and caused widespread destruction on several Caribbean islands:

• Cuba: At least 10 people were killed by the storm on the island, officials say. Three quarters of the population are without power
• St Martin and St Barthelemy: Six out of 10 homes on St Martin, an island shared between France and the Netherlands, are now uninhabitable, French officials say. Nine people had died and seven were missing in the French territories, while four are known to have died in Dutch Sint-Maarten
• Turks and Caicos Islands: Widespread damage, although extent unclear
• Barbuda: The small island is said to be “barely habitable”, with 95% of the buildings damaged. One death has been confirmed
• Anguilla: Extensive damage with one person confirmed dead
• Puerto Rico: More than 6,000 residents of the US territory are in shelters and many more without power. At least three people have died
• British Virgin Islands: Widespread damage reported, and five dead
• US Virgin Islands: Damage to infrastructure was said to be widespread, with four deaths confirmed
  Another hurricane, Jose, has been weakening over the western Atlantic, with swells due to affect parts of Hispaniola (the island split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, later this week.
  • UK plan to bolster hurricane relief effort
  • Cuba stunned and suffering
  • ‘Island looks like a bomb site’

Nato’s general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, has said North Korea’s nuclear programme “is a global threat and requires a global response”.

“That of course also includes Nato,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

But he refused to say whether an attack on the US overseas territory of Guam would trigger the military alliance’s collective defence pact.

Article 5 of the Nato treaty says that an attack against one member is considered an attack against all.

Guam, an island territory of the US in the Pacific Ocean, is a key military outpost and has been the subject of heated rhetoric from Pyongyang.

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“I will not speculate about whether Article 5 will be applied in such a situation,” Mr Stoltenberg said.

“What I will say is that we are now totally focused on how can we contribute to a peaceful solution of the conflict and press North Korea to stop its nuclear missile programmes.”

He called on North Korea to stop its development of nuclear weapons, saying it was a blatant violation of UN security resolutions and “a threat to international peace and stability”.

Nato has condemned Pyongyang’s tests but, as a military alliance, is not directly involved in the related diplomacy.

The comments from Mr Stoltenberg come as members of the UN Security Council differ on how to deal with the crisis following North Korea’s latest missile test over Japan.

The US has drafted a resolution to increase sanctions and cut off some of the last remaining sources of income for Pyongyang, as well as imports of oil.

Russia, however, has expressed scepticism about more sanctions, which have had little effect so far.

Appearing separately on the same programme as Mr Stoltenberg, British defence minister Michael Fallon said the US would have a right to ask other members of the United Nations to join any defence of its territory – but that should be avoided.

“What we have to avoid at all cost is the spilling over in to any kind of military conflict,” he said.

“So we’re working flat out at the United Nations to get a better resolution there, to enforce the existing sanctions. We are looking at sanctions across the European Union and of course we are trying to persuade China to keep its neighbour in check.”

Analysts believe a military conflict with North Korea would be devastating for both Pyongyang and South Korea; and some say that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seeking a nuclear deterrent rather than planning for open war.

George Clooney has said he “felt sick” while directing some scenes in his new movie Suburbicon.

The film’s plot sees a black family move into a predominantly white suburban community in the 1950s.

“The trickiest part [of shooting] was, we were in a very racially diverse neighbourhood in Fullerton, California,” Clooney said.

“And we had about 350 extras who were going to hurl a lot of racial slurs and say a lot of pretty terrible things.”

Clooney added: “Everybody who was making the film, we all just felt sick while we were doing it.”

Image copyright TIFF

Referring to the way the family is treated in the film, the director said: “These are things that happened – [neighbours] sang church hymns, they hung confederate flags over the fence, they built a fence around their house, these are things that really happened.

“But it was sickening to be part of it quite honestly, so that was one of the most difficult things to shoot.”

The movie, which is currently showing as part of the Toronto Film Festival, was conceived during the run up to the US election of November 2016, which was won by Donald Trump.

Clooney said: “We’d seen some things on the campaign trail where they were talking about building fences, and scapegoating Mexicans and Muslims, and we’re always reminded that these aren’t new things and new moments in our history.

“So we thought it would be interesting to talk about it, but we wanted the film to be entertaining, not a documentary, we didn’t want it to be an eat-your-spinach piece of filmmaking.

Image copyright Getty Images

“So we merged it with [an existing Coen Brothers script] Suburbicon, because we thought it was a funnier idea to put it in the suburbs in the 1950s where we all thought everything was perfect – if you were a white straight male.”

The actor and director said the real-life political climate the film was shot in ultimately altered the tone of the movie.

“While we were shooting, Trump was elected, and it changed the temperature of the film in a weird way,” Clooney explained.

“The country got angrier, whichever side you were on. We had to cut some of Josh Brolin’s scenes out, and one of the reasons is they were really slapstick funny, and it felt like the wrong tone suddenly.”

The film stars Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Karimah Westbrook – who drew parallels between her character (the mother of the African-American family) and her own experience of the entertainment industry.

“I think early on there was a lot of correlations as far as what I’ve experienced in Hollywood,” she said.

Image copyright Getty Images

“I wore my hair natural for a very long time, so when I first moved to Hollywood I had an afro, and my manager said ‘You’ll never work with your hair like that, you’ll have to straighten it’.

“I struggled with that for years, my looks, my hair… but I feel like things have changed so much in the industry, we have so many African-American women starring in shows now, so I feel there’s been progress, but there’s still a lot of things we’re facing on both sides.”

The BBC’s Paul Blake and Laura Bicker report from the British Virgin Islands, where Hurricane Irma’s force has destroyed communities, and left at least five people dead.

The flight into the island of Tortola should feature sweeping views of lush green hillsides and translucent-blue bays. Today it looks like the victim of a bomb blast.

On approach to the airport on Saturday, boats could be seen piled on top of one another like children’s toys. Others laid lop-sided on dry ground or semi-submerged offshore.

A car ride to the governor’s office gave a street-level view of the destruction. Many neighbourhoods have been flattened, their residents can be seen trying to cook and clean amidst the rubble.

Hill sides were strewn with debris and dotted by houses disembowelled by the storms powerful winds.

Around them, the earth looked scorched – not by fire, but by wind and water that has ripped away vegetation.

Power lines snaked across roads while residents drove over them in vehicles with blown-out windows.

Residents recalled the storm with horror, with many believing that the hurricane had spun off tornadoes, which then cut through buildings like a jigsaw.

As they tried to assess the damage, many asked with trepidation about Hurricane Jose – a smaller storm loosely following Irma’s path – and whether it was coming their way.

We met one survivor who was still trying to comprehend what had happened to his home. Arron Glasgow says he and his brother were fighting to keep the wind out when the roof suddenly blew off.

Standing in what used to be the family’s living room, he says “I’ve lost everything. What you see me have on – perhaps one other shirt – is what I have.”

Flipped cars and boats in the street meant driving was slow and treacherous.

Downed trees and power poles were buttressed by flimsy boards so that cars passed underneath.

With stagnant water pooling in the streets and a decimated utility system, there is now a concern that disease and other public health threats could emerge.

Image copyright Paul Blake/BBC

Image copyright Paul Blake/BBC

Some residents have criticised the UK government’s response as “pathetic and slow”. British troops have now arrived to help.

The Royal Engineers and Commandos co-ordinated by Joint Force Headquarters have retrofitted the arrivals lounge into something of a home base, where they are organising security and recovery operations.

Mid-afternoon on Saturday, those operations came into full swing with the arrival of a Royal Air Force A400M transport aircraft. As the massive prop plane came to a halt, its rear hatch cracked open.

Dozens of soldiers jogged out with gear that is being used to establish a sort of base of operations inside the arrivals lounge.

Over the coming days they’ll be working to reinstate law and order on the island and help jump-start the recovery process.

At the governor’s mansion, British soldiers were working to establish satellite communications with the outside world, while Brigadier John Ridge was liaising with governor Gus Jaspert about what operations needed to be prioritised.

At a local police station – we are told – British Army commandos are working with officers to try and re-establish control after reports of looting. For his part, the governor has imposed an overnight curfew to keep criminality at bay.

It is being billed as a military exercise, but when Russian and Belarusian forces start Zapad-2017 this week, many neighbouring countries will be looking on nervously.

Zapad-2017 (“West-2017”) is a joint strategic-level exercise involving Russian and Belarusian military forces, expected to begin on 14 September in Russia’s western military district Kaliningrad, and across Belarus.

It is scheduled to last about a week, but may well go on for longer. The exercise is part of a four-year rolling cycle of manoeuvres that focus each year on one broad region or “front” (“West”, “Eastern”, “Central” or “Caucasus”). This year’s Zapad exercise though is drawing much greater attention than did its predecessor in 2013.

The context has changed significantly. Russia has seized and annexed Crimea; it has supported a separatist war in eastern Ukraine with weaponry, training and, for periods, its own combat units. Russia is thus seen by several Nato countries as much more threatening.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has described Russia’s build-up for the exercise as “preparations for an offensive war on a continental scale”. Ukrainian border defences, he said, are being bolstered.

He also pointed to the fact that in his view, Russia has form here, using the pretext of an exercise to mobilise and position forces to conduct offensive operations. President Poroshenko said he could not rule out the possibility that the drill “may be used as a smokescreen to create new Russian army assault groups to invade Ukrainian territory”.

Image copyright EPA

Units on the move

Nato watchers and insiders do not necessarily share this concern about an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Russia expert Keir Giles, a fellow at Chatham House think tank, acknowledges that “previous Russian exercises on this scale have prepositioned troops for undertaking military operations, against Georgia in 2008 and against Ukraine in 2014”.

However, he says, “both of those moves were precipitated by an immediate political crisis – currently absent in Europe.

“And there have been plenty of other major Russian exercises in between,” he says, “which did not end up with somebody getting invaded”.

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Russia’s information warfare in Europe

Nonetheless, the fear of a resurgent and more aggressive Russia is real enough. That is why, over the past year, Nato has sent small multi-national units to Poland and to each of the three Baltic republics to underline its deterrent message. And that is why this year’s war games will be watched so closely.

Just how closely is a contentious issue. Russia, unlike Belarus, has been far more reluctant to invite Western observers in any number. This despite the fact that, as a member of the OSCE international security body, it is obliged to send out broad invitations if an exercise numbers more than 13,000 troops.

Mr Giles notes that, while Russia may be “content to see Europe alarmed at the prospect of Moscow throwing its military weight around”, Belarus seeks instead to calm the situation. The siting of the exercise in ranges across the middle of the country – not near the Polish and Lithuanian borders – was a deliberate policy decision intended to reduce the chances of misinterpretation, or incidents when Russian troops and aircraft come close to Nato borders.

Image copyright AFP

Belarus has been much more open towards international observers. Clearly satellites, airborne radars and other national intelligence collection measures will be used by Nato countries.

In addition, efforts are under way to mobilise concerned citizens in Belarus to observe military movements in their area and post them online for the benefit of non-government, open-source analysts and experts.

How many troops?

So just how big is this exercise and what will Western analysts and observers be watching for? Here assessments differ widely.

The Russians say some 12,700 troops will be involved in total, including a significant contingent from Belarus. (Notice this takes it below the 13,000 OSCE threshold.)

Western experts watching the preparations, especially the marshalling of railway flat-cars – the main way of moving heavy armoured formations to the exercise areas – say it will be considerably more.

Image copyright AFP

Some estimates suggest that up to 80,000 troops could be involved, but since there are a range of drills, exercises and spot mobilisations it is hard to be precise about numbers.

Russia will be testing its capacity to contain and respond to some form of outside aggression and will be deploying units from different services: heavy armour; airborne troops; “spetsnaz” elite reconnaissance teams; and electronic warfare specialists.

The Baltic Fleet will be involved, as will units from the 14th Corps based in Kaliningrad. One point of interest may be the part played at the tactical and strategic levels of “information operations troops” – a relatively new formation in the Russian order of battle.

Indeed, while there may be much to learn about Russia’s use of artillery, its capability in electronic warfare (already manifest in the fighting in Ukraine) and the growing importance of precision-guided munitions in Russia’s thinking, it may be this information aspect that is most important. For beyond the troop movements, Zapad-2017 is part of a wider propaganda effort to influence and shape opinion in the West.

Atmosphere of suspicion

The US analyst Michael Kofman in a fascinating piece on the War on the Rocks website, describes Zapad as “a good window into the Russian mindset.

“For all the modernisation and transformation of the Russian armed forces,” he writes, “in reality the Russian leadership is probably still afraid: afraid the United States will try to make a bid for Belarus, afraid of American technological and economic superiority, afraid the US seeks regime change in Moscow, and afraid Washington desires the complete fragmentation of Russian influence in its near abroad, or even worse, Russia itself.”

“Zapad,” he argues, “is the most coherent manifestation of these fears, and a threat from Moscow to the United States about what it might do if the worst should come to pass.”

And what of those lingering fears in some quarters that this could be much more than just an exercise? Mr Giles remains unconvinced by much of the media hyperbole surrounding Zapad.

But he has this caution: “The time to watch troop deployments most closely,” he says, “is likely to be after the exercise proper has ended.”

The final day of Zapad is 20 September but, he notes, “Russian troops are only scheduled to leave Belarus by 30 September – after the observers have departed, and when the media interest will have died down. That will be the time to decide whether Zapad this year has in fact passed off peacefully.”

Irma continues through Florida

After making its way through the Caribbean, causing death and destruction, Hurricane Irma has hit Florida. It’s brought winds of up to 120mph (192km/h), leaving 3.4 million homes in the US state without power, while parts of the city of Miami are under water.

Irma has been downgraded from a category three to a category two storm, but that will provide little comfort to the three million people living in the Tampa Bay area, which it is approaching. Some 6.3 million people in Florida were told to evacuate ahead of Irma’s arrival and US President Donald Trump has approved a major disaster declaration and emergency federal aid for the state.

You can follow the latest developments as Irma continues its journey through the US using our live page.

Police and prison officer pay cap to be lifted

Since 2013 pay rises for most public sector workers have been capped at 1% per year. But the BBC understands that the restriction is to be lifted for the first time for police and prison officers. Political correspondent Iain Watson said it was the “first concrete example of the pay cap being dismantled”. Other public sector workers may get the same news soon, it’s understood. Unions, Labour and some Conservative MPs have been calling for the cap to go.

MPs warned against Brexit ‘chaos’

MPs will vote later on the government bill which aims to end EU law’s supremacy in the UK. Labour is opposing the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, claiming that it allows ministers too much power to act without consulting Parliament. But Brexit Secretary David Davis is warning that not backing the legislation would lead to a “chaotic” Brexit. The bill would also convert all existing EU laws into domestic ones, to ensure there are no gaps in legislation after the UK leaves.

A foldable gift from China

By Tim Harford, BBC World Service

The Book of the Marvels of the World was full of strange foreign customs that Marco Polo claimed to have seen. But there was one that was so extraordinary, he could barely contain himself. “Tell it how I might,” he wrote, “you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason.” What had excited Marco so much? He was one of the first Europeans to witness an invention that remains at the foundation of the modern economy: paper money.

Read the full article

What the papers say

“Irma tears up Florida,” says the i, as most of the newspapers concentrate on the hurricane’s deadly effect on the south-eastern US. The Financial Times shows a street under water, reporting that it could take weeks to restore power in some areas. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail quotes the families of British people stranded in the Caribbean saying they feel their relatives have been “abandoned” by the UK government. Meanwhile, the Guardian says a United Nations report finds ministers are “flouting” their duty to protect citizens from illegal and dangerous levels of air pollution.

Animals and plants may be living in warm caves under Antarctica’s ice, according to a study.

Australian researchers said that Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Antarctica’s Ross Island, is surrounded by caves hollowed out in the ice by steam.

Soil samples retrieved from the caves have revealed intriguing traces of DNA from mosses, algae and small animals.

The research has been published in the journal Polar Biology.

“It can be really warm inside the caves – up to 25C in some caves. You could wear a T-shirt in there and be pretty comfortable,” said co-author Dr Ceridwen Fraser, from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

“There’s light near the cave mouths, and light filters deeper into some caves where the overlying ice is thin.”

Dr Fraser said that most of the DNA resembles that found in plants and animals from the rest of Antarctica. But that some sequences couldn’t be fully identified.

Co-researcher Prof Craig Cary, from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, said previous research had found that a range of bacteria and fungi lived in Antarctica’s volcanic caves.

“The findings from this new study suggest there might be higher plants and animals as well,” Prof Cary explained.

But Prof Laurie Connell, a co-author from the University of Maine, said the results did not confirm plants and animals were still living in the caves.

“The next steps will be to take a closer look at the caves and search for living organisms. If they exist, it opens the door to an exciting new world,” she explained.

There are a number of other volcanoes across Antarctica, the researchers pointed out, so sub-glacial cave systems could be common across the continent.

 

Three men and a boy raped a girl who had asked them for directions when she got lost on a night out with friends.

The girl, 16, who cannot be named, was trying to get to a friend’s house in Ramsgate, Kent, when she was attacked and then dumped on the street.

They fulfilled their “depraved sexual desires” on the 16-year-old girl, Canterbury Crown Court heard.

Three of the men were each jailed for 14 years each and a 17-year-old boy was jailed for seven years.

The girl was found crying in the street by two people returning from a night out.

Rafiullah Hamidy, 24, of High Street, Herne Bay, Shershah Muslimyar, 21, of Hovenden Close, Canterbury, Tamin Rahmani, 38, of Northwood Road, Ramsgate, and the 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, all denied rape but were found guilty by a jury in May.

‘Prolonged and degrading

Sentencing, Judge Heather Norton said the girl had been trying to make her way on foot back to a friend’s house having missed the last train home, and was “young, drunk, disorientated and vulnerable”.

She said the girl thought the four were going to help her, but instead they “took her up to a bedroom, pushed her on to a mattress and repeatedly raped her” over a sustained period.

Judge Norton said the girl had been clear that while she was being raped, others were in the room watching.

Describing it as a prolonged attack in degrading circumstances, she told the defendants: “This was an appalling and repeated gang rape of a vulnerable girl who had sought your assistance.”

They attacked the girl at Rahmani’s home in the early hours of 18 September 2016.

He owns 555 Pizza and Kebab in Northwood Road, Ramsgate, and is in the UK under a spousal visa.

Hamidy fled to Taranto in southern Italy after the attack where he was detained by local officers.

He was returned to the UK following an extradition hearing and taken into custody at Heathrow Airport on 28 March.

After the hearing, Det Insp Richard Vickery said the men “saw an opportunity to fulfil their depraved sexual desires and betrayed the trust she placed in them in the worst possible way”.

As deadly Hurricane Irma barrelled through the Caribbean this week, those places already hit are braced for a prolonged recovery.

It has caused more than $10bn (£7.6bn) in damage across the Caribbean so far, disaster risk experts said on Friday.

That would make it the costliest storm ever to hit the region, the Centre for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology said.

Airports are closed or inoperable and cruise lines have cancelled voyages.

Some parts of the region, such as St Kitts and Puerto Rico, faced extreme weather, but appear to have avoided the worst of the storm.

But other places have been shaken “to their core”, the secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, Hugh Riley, told the BBC.

Mr Riley said people were currently focused on protecting lives.

“That’s first and foremost … but yes, clearly it has not escaped our attention that the economic wellbeing of the Caribbean is taking a hit,” he said.

• How do you count the costs of a storm?

Irma is the second major storm to strike this season.

Financial analysts have estimated losses from Storm Harvey, which hit Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, at $90bn (£68bn), including damages and lost output. Texas officials say it could cost double that to rebuild.

Irma has caused an estimated $150m in damage on Barbuda, the island’s prime minister has estimated.

Damages on French islands are expected to exceed 200m euros (£180m), insurer Caisse Centrale de Reassurance said.

Irma has affected an estimated 1.2m people in the Caribbean before heading on to Florida in the US.

The $10bn estimate for the Caribbean does not include damage in the Dominican Republic or Cuba, which were later in the storm’s path.

Although many places are still assessing the damage from Irma, it is already clear that the combination of storms means 2017 is shaping up to be one of the costliest years ever for the insurance industry, Paul Schultz, chief executive of Aon Securities, told the BBC.

“Both from an economic perspective and from an insured perspective losses are going to be truly catastrophic,” he said.

Much of the damage sustained in Harvey was not covered by insurance.

Price warning

Harvey’s path through the Gulf of Mexico and Texas disrupted oil production and refining plants and contributed to a spike in gas prices.

Those problems deepened in Florida this week, as families stocked up on petrol in advance of Irma. Price search site, GasBuddy, estimated that more than 40% of stations in some areas were without fuel as officials ordered evacuations.

Authorities in Florida said they had received thousands of reports of price gouging – whereby sellers raise prices beyond what is considered fair – on items such as petrol and water.

Several airlines pledged to cap prices on flights for evacuations, after an outcry over fare increases.

Those companies were already grappling with millions in losses stemming from cancelled flights related to Harvey.

Analysts said the airlines could face prolonged challenges, depending on the scale of the damage wrought by Irma in the tourist destinations of the Caribbean and Florida.

“Curtailed travel to the south and to the Caribbean is likely material,” analysts for The Buckingham Research Group wrote in a note.

An analysis of tourist traffic in the Caribbean found that it fell by 2% after a typical hurricane and by as much as 20% for major events.

At least two hotels on St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands have already said they will be closed for months. And another hurricane is on its way.

The US, UK, France and the Netherlands are among those providing help to places affected by the storm, but a long-term decline in travel would be a blow to a major driver of the Caribbean economy.

Tourism directly and indirectly contributed about 15% of Caribbean GDP last year, according to the World Trade Organization.

“There isn’t any question that we as Caribbean people know how to get up and stand on our feet,” said Mr Riley. “The question is how long it will take.”