Monster Storm Roars Toward Florida
Sep 2, 7:11 PM (ET)
By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - Some 2.5 million people were urged to leave their homes and Florida residents jammed the roads on Thursday as powerful hurricane Frances roared toward the crowded southeast U.S. coast with enough force to cause major harm.
Frances lashed the southeastern Bahamas with 140 mph winds on Thursday and was expected to slam into the capital Nassau on Friday. It threatens to deliver a huge blow to Florida by Saturday morning, just three weeks after Hurricane Charley hit the state's west coast.
A total of 2.5 million people were being told to evacuate barrier islands, low-lying coastal areas and mobile homes in the path of the storm, Craig Fugate, director of the state's Division of Emergency Management, told reporters.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated 14.6 million Floridians live in the storm warning area.
Highway tolls were suspended and on the Beeline Expressway in central Florida, lanes were reversed to speed the long lines of traffic fleeing the coast. Traffic clogged major arteries in parts of the state.
"We really don't see anything to significantly weaken this hurricane," said U.S. Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield. "This is going to impact a lot of people."
Almost the entire east coast of Florida was under a hurricane warning, reviving memories of Hurricane Andrew, the most costly U.S. storm in history, which ravaged the Miami area in 1992.
Frances was a powerful Category 4 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, the same as Charley, which slammed into southwest Florida on Aug. 13. But Frances was twice as wide and capable of savaging a much broader area.
"You cannot hope this off, you cannot walk away. It is not time to hope, it is time to act," Fugate said.
Frances carried a potential storm surge of up to 14 feet above normal tides, and was expected to pour 10 to 20 inches of rain on Florida.
Schools, courts and offices closed along the Florida east coast. Residents rushed to secure their homes, snatching plywood, flashlights and bottled water off store shelves. Gas pumps ran dry and automatic teller machines ran out of cash.
CLOGGED ROADS
State officials said 8 hospitals and 19 nursing homes were being evacuated.
Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Charlie Bronson estimated that 5.7 million acres and 19,000 farms were in harm's way. Growers braced for yet another blow to the state's $9.1 billion citrus industry, which lost 20 percent of its crop when Charley felled trees and stripped them of fruit.
Florida's most populous areas were at risk, including Tampa and tourist center Orlando, home of Disney World . On the coast east of Orlando, the three space shuttles and other equipment were secured at the Kennedy Space Center.
Gov. Jeb Bush declared the state a disaster area on Wednesday to speed aid after the storm hits.
"I have no doubt that there will be tragedy associated with a storm like this, but I also have no doubt there will be miracles," said Dr. John Agwunobi, Florida's health secretary.
The two major arteries leading out of South Florida, Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike, were both clogged by midday on Thursday, with traffic shuffling along at 15 mph, or stopped altogether at times.
"There are more people on the road than we anticipated. People have started to evacuate without being told," said Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Kim Miller.
The hurricane skirted the tiny British colony of Turks and Caicos on Wednesday, toppling trees, knocking out power and phone lines and ripping off a few roofs but causing little structural damage.
It moved up over the Bahamas chain of 700 islands that are home to 300,000 people and was expected to hit the capital, Nassau, full blast on Friday.
Prime Minister Perry Christie told Bahamians they faced one of the most intense hurricanes in their history. "We have made every human effort to prepare ... we are ultimately in the hands of God," Christie said.
At 5 p.m. EDT, the eye of the hurricane was near San Salvador Island in central Bahamas, and 375 miles east-southeast of the south Florida coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Frances was moving slowly northwest at 10 mph (16 kph) on a course that the hurricane center predicted could bring the eye near the central Florida coast on Saturday morning. But the storm was so huge that hurricane conditions were expected six to eight hours before then and over a wide swath of the coast.
Charley caused about $7.4 billion in insured losses, the second-highest hurricane damage toll in U.S. history behind Hurricane Andrew's $25 billion tab in 1992. (Additional reporting by John Marquis in Nassau, Jim Loney and Frances Kerry in Miami, Michael Peltier in Tallahassee and Broward Liston in Daytona Beach)
I lived through my share of hurrincanes. Though it was kinda fun to be able to run, jump, and land 20 feet from where you took off, the damage they cause to homes and businesses makes me very sad. Good luck FL :monkey
