By BRADY DENNIS, TAMARA LUSH, DAVID ADAMS and JAMIE THOMPSON
Published September 3, 2004
A record 2.5-million Floridians began evacuating Thursday as the projected path of Hurricane Frances shifted to place Central Florida and the Tampa Bay area in the path of the colossal storm.
Residents from the Florida Keys to Daytona Beach fled their homes as the powerful Category 4 storm, roughly the size of Texas, moved closer. About 14.6-million of Florida's 17-million residents live in the areas under hurricane watches and warnings.
Forecasters predict Frances will sideswipe the east coast near Vero Beach about 11 a.m. on Saturday, then travel northwest to Polk County before angling into Hillsborough and Pasco counties. It could dump up to 10 inches of rain across an already soggy Tampa Bay area.
Schools in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough will close today so they can shelter some of the thousands of evacuees.
"We will get through this," Gov. Jeb Bush said. "We will meet the challenge and we will be stronger because of it."
Across Florida, it was a day of panic and fear as hospitals, courts and governments shut down. Evacuation orders rippled along the east coast.
Residents stripped stores of bottled water and canned food. They emptied cash machines, drained gas stations and joined a massive exodus to all points inland. Interstates were at a standstill with evacuees headed north and west. Hotels were booked solid as far away as Georgia and Alabama.
At 11 p.m., the hurricane was centered 330 miles east-southeast of the lower Florida east coast and was moving west-northwest near 10 mph. A roughly 300-mile stretch of the state's eastern coast, from Florida City to Flagler Beach, was under a hurricane warning.
The latest track has Frances landing as a Category 4 storm and then weakening rapidly into a Category 2, said Ernie Jillson of the National Weather Service. The core of a hurricane needs warm water to maintain intensity, he said, and will begin to collapse over land.
The storm is expected to take 12 hours to reach Polk County, possibly striking as a Category 1 storm. It then will head toward Pasco County as a tropical storm before swirling into the gulf, about 24 hours after landfall, Jillson said.
The track still is likely to change.
But with Frances on its doorstep, eastern Florida cleared out.
Traffic slowed to a crawl along northbound Interstate 95. Cars packed with entire families crept along, bumper to bumper. The beds of pickup trucks sagged under the weight of possessions stacked high in the back.
The evacuation request is the largest on record, surpassing the 1.3-million people urged to leave during Hurricane Floyd's near-miss in 1999, Gov. Bush said.
Jill Spitzer, 34, boarded her house in Cocoa and joined the migration with her husband and her two cats, Chloe and Kramer. They were headed for a hotel near Savannah, Ga.
"It's not worth the chance," Spitzer said.
Most of the residents told to leave were in South Florida - 300,000 in Palm Beach County, 250,000 in Broward County and 320,000 in Miami-Dade County. Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach, was the latest to issue an evacuation order, urging 120,000 to leave by today.
Storm surges of 15 feet or more could swallow the east coast if Frances takes dead aim, forecasters said.
Many cars heading west from Miami stopped at the Miccosukee gas station, the only one in the Everglades, where cars were four deep at the pumps off Alligator Alley.
The mood was tense as customers rushed to buy ice and gas, limited to $10 a car.
Alberto Semidei and his roommate, Jason Enriquez of Dania Beach, stood near their car and fumed because a man had just rudely cut them off at the pump. They were fleeing their Dania Beach apartment for a friend's house in Naples.
"Whatever happens, happens," said Enriquez, 25. "We can't control it."
No rooms at the inns
Tourists, entire hotels of them, also clogged the highways, their license tags reading like a roll call of safer places: Ohio, New York, West Virginia, Missouri, Texas, and on and on.
Reservation clerks of sold-out hotels groaned with each telephone ring, knowing someone seeking a room was on the other end.
Among them was Veronica Landgren, 21, and five friends who piled into two cars to leave Boca Raton for Naples.
"We have no clue where we are staying," said Landgren, a college student at Lynn University in Boca Raton. "I don't care if we have to sleep in the car, it's better than Boca."
Others stayed behind, hoping Frances would turn.
Thousands of residents in Miami Beach decided to postpone their departure until Friday morning, figuring the hurricane warning may be lifted if Frances stuck to its northerly track.
Even as ominously strong winds picked up, holidaymakers tried to get the most out of the curtailed Labor Day weekend on Miami Beach.
"It's beautiful out here," said Jennifer Coyne, from Syracuse, who was sitting in a beach chair clad in a bikini and reading an Anne Rice thriller as her three children splashed in the surf with her husband. "Hopefully, it's all a false alarm."
Daytona Beach surfers were in heaven.
"This is four or five times the average," said 20-year-old Phil Bies of Daytona, surfboard in hand. He spent the afternoon in the water with his friend, 38-year-old Todd Owen, who drove over from Spring Hill.
"I haven't surfed in over 20 years," Owen said. "But I couldn't pass this up."
Businesses didn't waste any time preparing, recalling how Andrew in 1992 and Charley last month both veered south at the last minute. In 1992, the eye of Andrew appeared headed for Fort Lauderdale, before turning south and striking Homestead, about 50 miles away.
Workers dangled from high-rise condominiums and hotels, blanketing windows with plywood. The sounds of bar music and tourist chatter were replaced by the shrill noise of drills and electric saws.
The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral was evacuated for the first time because of the dual threats of high wind and storm surge.
In Miami-Dade County, even the National Hurricane Center put up its storm shutters.
"Rapid, massive' response
Gov. Bush visited Brevard and Orange counties, two areas that will likely be affected by the storm.
"For those that haven't experienced a storm of the magnitude of Frances," he said, "it's hard to understand its awesome power."
He added: "There will be a lot more rain and a lot more flooding. The power of these winds will be equal to and perhaps more powerful than the winds of Charley. This is a serious storm."
Bush promised that the state's response would be "rapid and massive."
Nearly 3,000 National Guard soldiers have been put on alert to come to Florida, and 2,000 others are on standby. The Florida Highway Patrol has suspended vacations for all troopers, stationing them along highways to help stranded motorists.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency abandoned its offices in Orlando on Thursday and moved to Tallahassee, prepared to work from there.
President George W. Bush is planning to visit a reasonable time after landfall, said his chief political adviser Karl Rove.
Gov. Bush asked his brother to declare Florida a federal disaster area and make storm victims eligible for recovery aid.
Federal officials promised they had enough people and supplies in the state to handle two disaster-relief operations at once.
"We were successful with Charley because we were massive, overwhelming and fast. For this event, I want us to be massive, overwhelming and fast squared," said Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Ready to assess
Of particular concern on Thursday were the state's farms, which took a serious beating during Hurricane Charley, said State Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson.
About 5.7-million acres of agricultural land - roughly 19,000 farms - lies within Frances' projected path, Bronson said. Also of concern are numerous horse farms in the Ocala area. Owners are rushing to move the horses to Kentucky before the storm lands.
Advance recovery teams are either already stationed or are coming to every county that might be affected by Frances, said Frank Koutnik of Florida's emergency response team.
"Assessments of all damage will occur," said Koutnik said, "almost as the winds stop blowing."
By nightfall, many could do little but wait.
On the wall of the Emergency Operations Center in Broward County, a digital clock counted down the time to the end of hurricane season: 60 days; 16 hours; 17 minutes; 44 seconds.
Times staff writers Alisa Ulferts, Chase Squires, Bill Adair and Sherri Day contributed to this report.
