A newlywed couple and their family have been stranded at Disney World in Orlando by Hurricane Irma.

As Britons are being evacuated from the region after the most powerful storm ever hit the Atlantic Ocean Emma Blower and her family have been grounded.

The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm on Monday after battering Florida with 100mph winds and torrential rain leaving an estimated 13 million without power.

Newlywed Emma, of Rylands Lane, Wyke Regis, flew to Florida with her family a fortnight ago to marry her fiancé at the resort.

The four of them were due to fly home on Saturday night but the airport was shut and their flight cancelled.

She said: "We have rebooked but the first available flight for the four of us is next Saturday." While the pair have had to cover the accommodation costs the airline will refund the flights.

Emma said: “It’s not a great start to married life but we are all safe and in a Disney resort in Orlando.”

Recovery and aid efforts are under way in the worst-affected islands, while many British nationals are working to piece together their lives from the ruins of the storm.

Claudia Knight, originally from Dorset, managed to flee to safety from the Caribbean island of Tortola with her two-year-old daughter Dottie.

She said her partner, and Dottie’s father, Leo Whitting is stranded on the island of Tortola and carries a knife for protection as "everyone's turned feral".

The 33-year-old said: "I honestly thought he was dead. The military is everywhere with machine guns. Everyone's turned feral and no one's going out without being armed.

"You can't drive your car without a weapon, it's turning really nasty."

The prison was blown open by the storm meaning the inmates were free to roam, she added.

The couple have lived on the island for the past four years where Claudia runs an arts school and Leo works as a marine engineer.

She managed to speak with him thanks to "brief flickers of internet", adding "he phoned me shortly after and said 'I'm alive - Tortola isn't'."

On Monday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the Government's response to Hurricane Irma, amid claims the UK has done less to evacuate its citizens than other nations.

The Foreign Secretary said there had been an "unprecedented" effort to deal with the aftermath of the storm.

He is to fly to the Caribbean to visit the British territories devastated by Hurricane Irma. More than 700 troops and 50 police officers have already been sent to the British Virgin Islands.

The announcement of his visit comes after it was revealed that six deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with three in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.