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Locals heed warning to abandon coastline

Tampa Bay area residents, often casual about tropical weather, took the advance of Hurricane Charley seriously Thursday, heading from their homes to higher ground and clogging some highways and bridges.

The Howard Frankland Bridge eastbound was moving like cold glue by early Thursday afternoon as motorists fled Pinellas County. State traffic counts showed Interstate 4 carrying 25 percent more cars than normal Thursday evening, but in general Tampa traffic seemed to be moving well.

More than 800,000 people in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties were ordered to evacuate homes in low-lying or coastal areas. Additional evacuations were ordered in Hernando, Citrus and Manatee counties. Since there weren't nearly enough shelters to accommodate them all, many wound up trying to leave town.

In the afternoon, heavy traffic flowed across all three Tampa Bay bridges linking Pinellas with Hillsborough in Florida's biggest evacuation since 1999. That was when Hurricane Floyd brushed the state's east coast and prompted officials to urge a record 1.3-million people to evacuate, backing traffic up 30 miles or more.

In an effort to speed the retreat from the coast, the state suspended tolls on eastbound Interstate 75 across Alligator Alley and in all directions on the Sunshine Skyway bridge, the Pinellas County Bayway, Veterans Expressway, Suncoast Parkway and the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

The St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport shut down operations Thursday evening after the departure of its final scheduled flight at 9:10 p.m. Tampa International Airport was expected to suspend flights around noon today, to close all airsides and operate with a skeleton staff out of the main terminal until the storm passed well out of the area.

All residents of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, which occupies the end of a peninsula jutting into Tampa Bay, were ordered to evacuate.

Pinellas residents who had to evacuate but didn't want to get far from home - and those who just got sick of sitting in traffic backups - tried to check into hotels and found rooms hard to come by.

"We're completely sold out," said front desk associate Joan Campbell of the Residence Inn on Ulmerton Road. All rooms were booked for Thursday and today, Campbell said.

Drivers pulled off Roosevelt Boulevard and tried to check into the Radisson Hotel & Convention Center. The hotel already was booked for a 300-person wedding and a soccer tournament, but out-of-town guests were calling to cancel as locals inquired about rooms.

"We can't answer our phones quick enough," said general manager Katie Doherty.

The hotel took reservations for Thursday but warned guests they might have to leave today, since the hotel itself is in an evacuation area.

In Tarpon Springs, city and county officials issued evacuation orders to nearly half of the city's 22,000 residents.

"It's a mandatory evacuation, but we're not going door to door and putting people in handcuffs," Tarpon Springs Fire Rescue Chief Kevin Bowman said. "We're just asking people respectfully to follow the county's (evacuation) orders."

At the northern tip of Tampa Bay, Cheryl Mortenson and her mother, 81-year-old Dee Mortenson, spent the morning putting plywood over the windows of their stilt home on Shore Drive. They planned to leave for a relative's home in Temple Terrace.

"This one, I think, is the big one," said Mortenson, 45, a graphic designer and former city clerk. "I've had a really bad feeling about it from the very beginning."

The mandatory evacuation of 280,000 residents in Hillsborough covers the county's most vulnerable areas, including Town 'N Country in northwest Hillsborough, flood-prone South Tampa, pockets along the Hillsborough River in central Tampa, Davis and Harbour islands, and the stretch of southern Hillsborough that runs along U.S. 41. All mobile home residents were told to leave.

"This storm is exactly the kind of thing we've been thankful to avoid for so many years," said Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean. "We need to take this seriously."

By 12:30 p.m. Thursday, before Hillsborough declared its evacuation, roads were already jammed. Northbound Interstate 275 was a sea of cars, many with Pinellas license plates. On S Dale Mabry Highway, cars going from South Tampa toward the highway were bumper to bumper. The pressure eased as the day wore on.

Traffic woes aside, Hillsborough County government and law enforcement officials stressed repeatedly that this looming storm worries them.

"Please evacuate," Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said. "This is not the kind of storm you can just ride out. This storm coming on the heels of two weeks of extraordinary rain is a bad situation. You can always repair your property. It's lives we're worried about."

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and Tampa Police Department moved their aircraft to safety and gassed up their patrol cars. They are prepared to help with evacuation traffic and to respond to any post-hurricane chaos, said Sheriff Cal Henderson and police Chief Steve Hogue.

The 39 Red Cross shelters across the county have a total capacity of about 45,000. That, plus the fact that Hillsborough shelters won't open until 6 a.m., means people might be better off staying with friends or relatives or at a motel somewhere outside Charley's direct path.

Emergency operations officials, who will begin a formal evacuation at 6 a.m. today, encouraged people not to rely on shelters.

"Remember, public shelter is a life boat," said Larry Gispert, said Hillsborough County emergency manager. "It's not a cruise ship."

At one home on Davis Boulevard, a personal assistant said the homeowners were away.

"If you call evacuating to New York evacuating, then yes, they have evacuated," he said.

At other mansions, residents said they would be taking off - to their second homes.

Bill Hodges lives on a canal in Apollo Beach. He plans to stay in his house until told otherwise.

His family filled the gas tank of their car, got extra ice and some cash and will fill a cooler with food.

"I went through Hurricane Hugo," he said. "It didn't get me then and I don't expect it to now."

Times staff writers Bill Varian, Richard Danielson, Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Michelle Jones, Abbie Vansickle, Jamie Thompson, Charlotte Sutton, Steve Hegarty, Bridget Hall Grumet and Megan Scott contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.