MIAMI, Florida (2 Sep 2004) -- Some 2.5 million people were urged to leave their homes and Florida residents jammed the roads on Thursday as Hurricane Frances roared toward the crowded southeast U.S. coast with enough sheer size and force to cause major devastation. Frances lashed the southeastern Bahamas with 140 mph winds on Thursday and was expected to slam into the capital, Nassau, on Friday. Its winds dropped to 130 mph by evening, forecasters said, but it was still a major hurricane and could strengthen again before hitting Florida on Saturday, 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. 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. By Thursday evening, Frances was a strong Category 3 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, compared to Charley, which was a Category 4 when it hit southwest Florida on Aug. 13. But Frances was twice as wide and capable of savaging a much broader area. 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. "This will be a surge event, a wind event, an inland flooding and likely a tornado event," said state meteorologist Ben Nelson. 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 Police in the Miami area toured mobile home parks to urge residents to leave, mindful of how Charley shredded such homes when it whipped over the coastal towns of Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte. 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. | | Jean Gardner of West Palm Beach was making her way north on the interstate with five cats and a brace of Chihuahuas in travel cages inside her SUV. "You can't take pets to shelters, so I'm trying to get to my sister's in Atlanta. But I don't know which is moving faster, me or the hurricane," said Gardner. 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. The storm moved Thursday over the Bahamas chain of 700 islands that are home to 300,000 people and was expected to hit Nassau 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 11 p.m. EDT, the eye of the hurricane was near Northern Cat Island in the central Bahamas, and 330 miles east-southeast of the south Florida coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Frances was moving slowly west-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 afternoon. 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) SOURCE - Reuters |
