Florida braces for hurricane,
MIAMI — Florida residents picked store shelves clean and long lines formed at gas pumps Wednesday as Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 monster with potentially catastrophic winds of 185 mph, steamed toward the Sunshine State and a possible direct hit on the Miami metropolitan area of nearly 6 million people.
The most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic destroyed homes and flooded streets as it roared through a chain of small islands in the northern Caribbean. Meteorologists said Irma could strike the Miami area by early Sunday, then rake the entire length of Florida’s east coast and push into Georgia and the Carolinas.
“This thing is a buzz saw. I’m glad Floridians are taking it very seriously,” said Colorado State University meteorology professor Phil Klotzbach. “I don’t see any way out of it.”
At the same time, meteorologists warned the forecast this far out contains a large degree of uncertainty. As a result, Florida residents and tourists received different messages from state and local authorities about when to evacuate and where to go.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott waived tolls on all Florida highways and told people if they were thinking about leaving to “get out now.” But in the same breath, he acknowledged
that “it’s hard to tell people where to go until we know exactly where it will go.”
Amid the dire forecasts and the example set by Hurricane Harvey less than two weeks ago in devastated Houston, some people who usually ride out storms in Florida seemed unwilling to risk it this time. “Should we leave? A lot of people that I wouldn’t expect to leave are leaving. So, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow!’” said Martie McClain, 66, who lives in the South Florida town of Plantation. Still, she was undecided, and worried about getting stuck in traffic and running out of gas.
As people rushed to buy up water and other supplies, board up their homes with plywood and gas up their cars, Scott declared a state of emergency and asked the governors of Alabama and Georgia to waive trucking regulations so gasoline tankers can get fuel into Florida quickly to ease shortages.
It has been almost 25 years since Florida took a hit from a Category 5 storm. Hurricane Andrew struck just south of Miami in 1992 with winds topping 165 mph killing 65 people and inflicting $26 billion in damage. It was at the time the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.
“We’ll see what happens,” President Donald Trump said in Washington. “It looks like it could be something that could be not good, believe me, not good.”
Trump’s exclusive Mara-Lago resort in Palm Beach — the unofficial Southern White House — sits in the path of the storm.