By Marc Santora, Henry Fountain and Vivian Yee
Miami — After plowing (click here) a path of destruction through the Caribbean and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee in one of the largest evacuations in American history, Hurricane Irma began to maul southern Florida on Saturday and was poised to howl up its west coast Sunday with deadly force and fury.
The time to gather supplies was over, and in most of the region, it was getting too late to run. The Florida Keys faced a potentially catastrophic brew of winds topping 125 miles per hour and a storm surge that threatened to drown whole islands. By Saturday evening, the ocean around Key West was spilling into hotel parking lots and onto roads, while tornadoes growled through Palm Beach and Broward counties, rumbling like freight trains on the move....
