Trump to visit Florida in the wake of Irma

US President Donald Trump says he will visit Florida in the near future as the state was being battered by Hurricane Irma.

“We’re going to Florida very soon,” said the president alongside first lady Melania Trump outside the White House on Sunday. “It’s going to play out over the next five or six hours. I’m going in now for meetings, but it’s all about coordination. I think we’re really well coordinated, as well as you can possibly be.”

He further suggested that the US government is prepared to deal with the storm.

“The bad news is that this is some big monster, but I think we’re really well coordinated,” he said.

Irma, meanwhile, was making its way north after making landfall on the southwestern coast of Florida.

“It’s just about the biggest ever recorded that hit land, and unfortunately we got it. We may have been a little bit lucky in that it went on the west, and may not have been quite as destructive, but we’re going to see,” the president said.

Florida’s coastal and southern areas have been evacuated since last week with a record 6.3 million people leaving their homes.

More than two million people were also left without power across the state, which is home to President Trump’s famous resort, Mar-a-Lago, located in Palm Beach on the east side of the state.

Mar-a-Lago was reportedly closed while guests at Trump’s Doral hotel were asked to leave.

According to the University of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, an estimated $1.73 trillion worth of real estate was in the path of Irma as of Friday.