As clouds rolled over Pasco County on Saturday, people gathered around televisions to watch Florida's east coast get clobbered and wonder what kind of trouble what's left of Hurricane Frances will bring here today.
The county issued a mandatory evacuation order for Pasco's 125,700 mobile home residents and strongly urged thousands more in low-lying areas to leave.
"Based on the forecast, Pasco County should experience sustained tropical storm force winds for most of Sunday," Michele Baker, the county's director of Emergency Management, said at 12:30 p.m., during the first of many live television briefings Saturday.
Eight to 12 inches of rain was expected to flood low-lying areas, with areas along rivers and the coast particularly vulnerable.
"It is not safe to stay in a manufactured or mobile home," Baker said. For residents who do not have friends or family to stay with "we advise you to join us at the public shelters."
Sheriff Bob White hoped residents would take advantage of Saturday's fair weather and reasonably light traffic to run errands.
"Go ahead and make your rounds to grocery stores and pick up supplies or do whatever you need to do," he was advising. But he advised them to be hunkered down by dinnertime Saturday, prepared to wait out the storm through Monday.
By midday Saturday, more than 400 people had already taken refuge in the county's public evacuation centers.
Jean Vilk, 69, was one of about 30 seniors from Suncoast Gateway Mobile Village in Port Richey who found shelter at Chasco Elementary School in New Port Richey.
"We were good boys and girls and we did what we were told," she said. "We're all concerned about our homes, but like everybody says, the important thing is we're here safe."
People thronged grocery stores and roamed streets looking for gas stations with pumps that had not yet run dry.
A line of dozens of cars and trucks waited alongside the courthouse in New Port Richey, at one of many sandbag stations. Every couple of hours, a dump truck pulled up with a new load of sand as stripe-clad jail inmates shoveled it into bags.
People piled them in their trunks, in the beds of their pickup trucks and even in passenger seats.
Pam Manna drove up in her Mazda Miata. Her husband, who works for the county, was using their van to transport the disabled and elderly to shelters.
"We get 25 bags so I can do half now and half later," she said. Manna, of Port Richey's Bear Creek subdivision, managed to get seven bags in the trunk and two in the seat beside her.
"Unfortunately, some of the houses are higher than others," she said. "I happen to sit in a low area, and that's the biggest thing I'm afraid of right now."
Emergency information is posted on the county's Web site, www.pascocountyfl.net/oem/index.asp and on the county's cable access television station Channel 19 in west Pasco and Channel 2 in east Pasco.
Residents also may call the county's information center at (727) 847-8959 or (352) 521-5137.
Pinellas 
