Storm Irma: Still Going.

Last Tuesday (5/9/17) Hurricane Irma struck the island of Anguilla, Saint Maarten and Barbuda in the eastern Caribbean as a Category 5 storm.

Since then it has made its way across the Caribbean striking the islands of Hispaniola, the Virgin Islands (Both British and American), Turks & Caicos and Cuba.

On Sunday (10/9/17) Irma struck the southern US state of Florida and spent the next day and a half making its way up the Florida Peninsula.

At around 20:00GMT (14:00 local) Irma finally crossed out of Florida into the states of Georgia and South Carolina bringing largescale flash and storm-surge flooding.

Having dropped to a Tropical Storm Irma is continuing to make its way across the states of Alabama and Kentucky.

With Irma only leaving Florida and the relief operation proper beginning less than a day ago it is hard to give an accurate assessment of the damage it has caused. The latest update I have in front of me simply reads; "Damage Assessments Underway."

It is clear though that Irma has knocked out the electricity supply to around 65% of customers across the state.

The main area of concern is the Florida Keys. This a Coral Reef Archipelago at the south-easterly tip of Florida made up of more than 50 main islands.

The Florida Keys are linked together by a network of bridges known as US Route 1 or "The Overseas Highway." Apart from allowing vehicles to drive over the Caribbean Sea this also carries electricity and clean water to the islands that make up the Keys.

This main road has been damaged in the hurricane making vehicle access impossible. Floating debris is also making it extremely difficult to access the Keys by boat.

Initial estimates though are that some 65% of all homes on the Keys have suffered major damage with 25% being completely destroyed. Although the links to the mainland have held there are also severe problems with both the electricity supply on many of the islands due to local infrastructure being destroyed.

As a result it seems likely that the Florida Keys will be uninhabitable in the medium to longterm. This means that the roughly 10,000 people who remained in the Keys will have to be rescued and the roughly 80,000 permanent residents will have to be evacuated to the Florida Peninsula where they will have to be housed for quite some time.

Although it might sound strange this means I would conduct a rescue operation on the Keys. However I would focus the majority of my efforts in terms of restoring electricity and water supplies to the least damaged areas - likely on the east of the Peninsula. This would allow the people evacuated from those areas to return home freeing up resources to care for evacuees from the Keys.

It seems though the US has been spared the worst of Irma's wrath due to a number of factors.

Firstly it hit Cuba really hard doing extensive to the Cuban Keys. In doing this damage Irma lost a lot of its energy taking it down from a Category 5 hurricane to a Category 3.

As Irma left Cuba it went through what is known as an Eyewall Replacement Cycle.

A hurricane is essentially really strong winds blowing in a clockwise circle around a central point. The central point is known as the Eye and the winds directly around it known as the Eye Wall. These winds are constantly being sucked closer to the Eye. Occasionally one Eye Wall collapses into the Eye and a new Eye Wall is created from the outer bands of winds.

During this replacement cycle the hurricane is weaker. Irma never fully completed this Eyewall Replacement Cycle which prevented it picking  more energy as it crossed from Cuba to Florida.

Finally Irma only ever partially made landfall in Florida. This landfall was only really a technical landfall rather than a full landfall with only 50% of the Eye passing over land. The other 50% remained out over water.

The much more serious situation would have been for the 100% of the Eye to make sustained landfall some distance in from the coast. This would have doubled the damage done to the coastal areas and increased the area of maximum damage across the centre and east of the Peninsula.

In the Caribbean islands the relief effort is scaling up amid quite some criticism.

This is largely being driven by the British media. Following the Grenfell Tower fire back in June they attempted to establish a narrative of the Government being uncaring. Since then every time there is any sort of disaster they immediately criticise the government in order reinforce this narrative in an effort to undermine the government.

This media-led criticism of the British Government has been picked up by the media in France and the Netherlands who also have territories within the Caribbean.

The people leading this criticism don't seem to have any understanding of the complexity of the task.

The first problem is that the Caribbean is really far away from Europe.

Anguilla the most easterly of the British territories affected is around 6,400km (3,800 miles) away from the British mainland. Turks & Caicos the most westerly affected British territory is around 6,600km (4,000 miles) away from the British mainland.

Disaster relief is not like sending an email or updating Facebook. You physically have to move things across distances and the greater the distances the longer that takes.

It's very easy to say you can speed things up flying supplies across those distances.

However normally Anguilla doesn't have an airport or at least not one that can land transatlantic aircraft. Instead it relies on the airport on St Maarten with aircraft landing there and passengers and equipment being transferred to Anguilla on smaller aircraft and boats. The airport at St Maarten was destroyed by Irma.

Also disaster relief efforts require a lot of heavy plant equipment.

One of the things that has had to be brought into St Maarten is a Ship-to-Shore Container Crane. This is used to transport shipping containers from ships to the shore. It is essentially a square kilometre of metal and motors that weighs close to a hundred tonnes.

Therefore flying in this type of equipment is not an option. Aircraft big enough and powerful enough to carry it simply do not exist.

That is why what happens in Florida is so important. On Sunday (9/9/17) I said that the Caribbean islands have to import everything they use from abroad. Normally that means they import them from Florida in the US.

Even if the US government doesn't support relief efforts in the Caribbean once Florida has got back on its feet the Caribbean islands can start sourcing supplies and equipment from the US. It can then be relatively quickly shipped over the comparatively short 1,100km (660 mile) distance from Florida to Turks & Caicos.

The second major problem has been that directly behind Hurricane Irma there has been Hurricane Jose.

Obviously you can't place relief supplies in the path of a hurricane otherwise they'll simply be destroyed. Likewise you are limited in any repair work you can do to infrastructure such as ports in case the next hurricane destroys it and kills all of your engineers.

What the UK has done is back in July it deployed the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Ship RFA Mounts Bay to the Caribbean on the off-chance there would be a hurricane.

Mounts Bay is essentially a floating harbour. It's purpose to carry supplies and then quickly unload them to shore or onto other ships. It comes complete with a water treatment and bottling plants along with its own electricity supply and medical facilities. It also carries with it a helicopter and landing craft

For this mission Mounts Bay has been equipped with 300 Royal Marines. The Navy's infantry these are experts in amphibious warfare. When it comes to moving heavy equipment and large amounts of supplies from a ship to shore without a harbour there a few things they do not know.

Mounts Bay has also been equipped with some 200 Army Engineers. These are specialists in the aspects of construction, electrical, hydro and mechanical engineering you need to deploy and sustain an army in war. They carry with them all the equipment you would need to repair a port, an electrical grid or a drinking water system.

In a mission of this type those Commando Engineers first job is to fan out and assess the damage in order to draw up a plan of action to repair that damage.

Within 24hrs of Irma striking Mounts Bay docked in Anguilla deploying engineers to conduct assessments there. It then set sail for St Maarten where it deployed more engineers to help France fix the island's airport.

Mounts Bay has since sailed to Turks & Caicos where a third deployment of engineers are carrying out assessments. It is currently docked at the British Virgin Islands between the two.

The UK has also been pre-positioning relief supplies at logistics hubs in neighbouring Caribbean islands out of the path of the hurricanes.

Much to my annoyance the main one of these logistics hubs is in Barbados. Even more to my annoyance Barbados has apparently been nicknamed; "Croydon." Because it's so far away from anything important.

While Irma was hitting Florida Hurricane Jose was reaching the eastern Caribbean islands. It missed those islands instead turning into the Atlantic Ocean where it is predicted to die out.

This has allowed the UK to dramatically step up its relief efforts.

With the first wave of Commando Engineers having re-opened air ports and sea ports and established landing points supplies are now being transferred from the logistics hubs by boat.

Yesterday (11/9/17) a further 200+ military and police personnel were flown from the UK to Barbados. They will be joining the relief supplies being shipped from Barbados to the affected islands.

Today (12/9/17) HMS Ocean has set sail for the Caribbean from Gibraltar - another UK overseas territory in the Mediterranean. This comes complete with surgical facilities, the ability to provide electricity to the equivalent of 8,000 homes and produce 300 tonnes of drinking water per day.

For this particular mission HMS Ocean has been equipped with 650 engineers and medical staff, dozens off all terrain, amphibious vehicles and 260 pallets of aid including clothing for 500 people.

Most crucially HMS Ocean is a Helicopter Carrier. So it will be bringing with it 10 helicopters including the heavy lift Chinook.

The only problem is that HMS Ocean will take 12 days to arrive.

But if you know of a quicker way to get a ship from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean the Royal Navy would love to hear from you.

19:45 on 12/9/17 (UK date).