Emergency officials ordered the total evacuation of the Florida Keys on Thursday, giving nearly 83,000 residents plenty of time to flee Hurricane Ivan's deadly winds, which flattened most of Grenada.
Ivan weakened slightly Thursday and headed straight for Jamaica with nearly 150 mph winds. It could reach Florida as early as Sunday. It has already killed 23 people in five countries.
Florida officials fear the damage the killer storm could do to the already rain-soaked peninsula that has suffered two hurricanes - Charley and Frances - in the past month.
"Ivan has the potential to be worse than anything we have seen before," Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday. "I plan to do some praying tonight."
In the Tampa Bay area, reaction to the possibility of yet another hurricane's striking the state ranged from weariness to acceptance.
"It's affected all my customers," said George Smith, 37, owner of Geo's Barber Shop in Tampa's Ybor City. "They all come in saying they just want to see where Ivan will head."
But in the Keys, people weren't waiting.
All tourists and people in recreational vehicles and mobile homes were ordered to clear out of the Keys on Thursday, the third time in less than a month. All Monroe County residents were urged to leave today. Their only road out: U.S. 1, a two-lane road and bridges linking Miami to Key West.
Even hardy Keys residents, notorious for riding out hurricanes, were gassing up and heading out.
"It's just something about that name Ivan that really gets me," said Scott Simmons, owner of Holiday Isle, the biggest resort in the upper Keys. "It doesn't sound as if we have any good news."
Hurricane forecasters expected that Ivan would be a Category 4 storm over Cuba and then hit the Keys, but they cautioned that its intensity will probably fluctuate. Two of the most powerful Atlantic storms ever - Isabel in 2003 and Mitch in 1998 - were both Category 5 storms that weakened before landfall. Hurricane Charley, however, was a Category 2 as it left Cuba but hit Florida as a Category 4.
Conflicting forecast models fanned out like a fishtail after Cuba, sending the storm to the Panhandle, up the Gulf Coast or up the East Coast by Tuesday.
At 11 p.m., Ivan was centered near 15.5 north latitude, 73.3 west longitude, about 290 miles southeast of Jamaica and about 900 miles southeast of Key West, with maximum sustained winds near 150 mph.
"People are at wit's end that have been impacted by this, and the people we're asking to respond have some challenges of their own," said Bush.
Thousands of state and federal workers, including National Guard soldiers, have been working nonstop since Charley. "Maybe someone creative in Hollywood could come up with something like this, but this is past my imagination," Bush said.
But it's not unprecedented.
In 1964, hurricanes Cleo, Dora and Isabel struck Florida within two months, tearing through Florida and creating the most expensive hurricane season at the time.
In 1871, three storms hit the state, and four hit in 1886. In 1995, three hurricanes struck the state: Allison, Erin and Opal. But they were spread out over a three-month period.
"It's unusual," said Barry Goldsmith of the National Weather Service in Ruskin. "But, superstitiously, is this our year?"
Ivan's potential sweep across densely populated South Florida - already affected by Charley and Frances - prompted state health officials Thursday to begin plans to evacuate dozens of hospitals.
Even as medical officials struggled to grasp the magnitude of such an endeavor, officials in the Florida Keys ordered two C-130 transport planes from the North Carolina Air National Guard to ship most of their hospital evacuees out of state.
At least 50 Monroe County hospital patients are expected to be evacuated today, all but the sickest to a facility in Gadsden, Ala. Plans were also being made to evacuate 250 nursing home residents. It marked the first time in this year's hurricane season that officials have transported evacuees out of state. Many hospitals already are near capacity because of Charley and Frances.
Many South Florida hospitals were built before the state enacted tougher building standards after Hurricane Andrew, a 1992 Category 5 storm that leveled much of southern Miami-Dade County.
"When you're facing a Category 5 hurricane that has the whole state in its cone, you have to think about where can you transfer these people, where you know they will be safe," said Alan Levine, secretary for the state Agency for Health Care Administration. "In many cases, that may mean it will be appropriate to send them out of state."
But most people should not travel so far, officials said. With fuel supplies still low in parts of the state after Frances' massive evacuation, officials fear that a run on gas stations by people trying to get out of state could jeopardize those who truly need to get out of the way of storm surge, the deadliest characteristic of hurricanes.
"It's kind of the worst of all worlds," Bush said. He urged people not to leave until they have been asked to do so by their local emergency management office, and he promised the state would help them find a safe place to stay before the storm hits.
"At this point, Florida knows more about moving vast numbers of people quickly and safely than just about any other place on the planet," Bush said. Complicating matters is that many people who fled Florida because of Frances are now clogging highways on their way home, Bush said.
Florida has 171-million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel in storage and another 55-million in ships that could unload at the state's ports in a matter of days, Bush said. On average, Florida drivers burn 26.5-million gallons of fuel a day. But many gas stations in hard-hit spots still have no electricity, so the fuel they have can't be pumped. Bush said he has asked power companies to make restoring power to gas stations a priority.
At the 178-room Holiday Isle, guests left the Islamorada party place with little encouragement. Simmons had his 300 employees watch television coverage of Ivan in the Caribbean, where homes have been leveled, and pushed them to leave.
"Where do we send people is actually a question," Simmons said. "They don't know where to go: the east coast, the west coast or to Canada."
Bush said the storm's unpredictable track makes it difficult for evacuees to know whether they should head east or west. That's why he wants them to stay in their communities as long as they have access to a sturdy structure.
"If they have a safe place to be, they don't need to go to Tennessee," Bush said.
For Tampa Bay area residents, the mere thought of another hurricane is too much to bear.
Lynn Brown is sick of hearing about hurricanes. During Charley and Frances, more than 20 in-laws and other relatives stayed in Brown's home near U.S. 19 and 38th Avenue N in St. Petersburg.
"It's very stressful to have that many people sleeping in your house," said Brown, who is married with three young children, a dog and a cat.
"I'm definitely tired of the hurricanes," said Brown, 30, a Florida native and University of South Florida-St. Petersburg junior. "I don't remember ever having to prepare for hurricane season as I have this season. I'm ready for it to be over."
- Times staff writers Marcus Franklin, Tamara Lush and Kevin Graham contributed to this report, which includes information from the Associated Press.
