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Article snippet: BIG PINE KEY, Fla. — The rescuers from Los Angeles came prepared for anything: mud, bodies, snakes, alligators and wild-eyed survivors who had ridden out Hurricane Irma on this frail parenthetical of sand and palms at the southernmost cusp of America. The latest word out of the Keys suggested a premodern struggle in a post-apocalyptic landscape. “Consider everybody in this area that you come across armed and ready to shoot,” Craig Wobig, a leader of California Task Force 1, cautioned the team on Tuesday morning before pulling away from the Boy Scout camp they had commandeered as a base of operations. The first person they found was tanned, shirtless and bewildered. “Got a guy!” a rescuer called out as the sweat-soaked Californians swarmed Bob Neurath, 68, and blasted whistles that could be heard for blocks. Mr. Neurath’s generator was malfunctioning, which was less than ideal, but mostly he was hoping to be saved from the imminent dwindling of his medication, which was unlikely to last the week. His mail-order refill, he reckoned, would not be arriving on time. Most of Florida might have gotten off relatively easy, but Irma’s drubbing of the Keys was, perhaps, predictable. These wiry sand-spits, which at high tide barely qualify as islands, have faced off against hurricanes dozens of times over the last century, including one in 1935 that killed nearly 500 people and is still counted among the most intense ever to strike the United States. The Keys have a losing ... Link to the full article to read more