Key West Rabbi Offers Chabad As Hurricane Irma Storm Shelter
Image by Getty Images
Rabbi Yaakov Zucker, the Chabad rabbi in the Florida resort of Key West, is offering his building as a potential shelter for local residents who might face a direct hit from the ferocious Hurricane Irma.
Zucker, who has been working to prepare the building, told the Algemeiner that the Chabad house was a “hurricane 5 stage shelter, if you will.” He added that it was constructed to be flood-proof and was “one of the strongest buildings in town.”
Still, he urged residents to leave town to more secure areas inland in Florida, and said that his local chapter of Chabad was trying to coordinate exit strategies for Key West locals.
“I told all my people, please, if you can get out of the town please do, and if not we’re all gonna help each other get out of town,” he said.
He told the Algemeiner that the atmosphere in Key West is tense, as Hurricane Irma’s path through the region remains unclear.
“The town is panicking,” he said. “There are long lines for gas, which keeps on running out. This morning there’s already no water or cans.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter, @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
