Residents of the chain of islands at the tip of southern Florida could be prevented from returning to their homes for weeks as a result of the extensive devastation from a recent hurricane.
U.S. homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said a recovery in the Florida Keys "is going to take a while because of damage to bridges that link the islands to the U.S. mainland."
The damage in mainland Florida was in fact spread across a very large area. The state is the third most populous in the U.S. with more than 20 million residents. Nearly 6 million people had no power Monday and large areas were devastated by fallen trees, roofs ripped from homes and roads closed by windswept rains.