Irma set for direct hit on Tampa
Hurricane brings threat of deadly storm surge
MIAMI - Only hours before Hurricane Irma was expected to slam into
south Florida, a last-minute shift in its projected track put Tampa in line for a direct hit and triggered new mandatory evacuation orders for an additional quarter-million people.
The new track, farther west than earlier projections, would make the Tampa Bay area the bull’s-eye for a major hurricane for the first time in almost a century.
The latest forecast calls for Irma, downgraded to Category 3 as it rolled over Cuba, to roar ashore Sunday in the low-lying Florida Keys, then hit southwestern Florida, move up the state’s Gulf Coast and slam into the Tampa Bay area. Forecasters warned of 10- to 15-foot storm surges in the Naples area and 5 to 8 feet around Tampa.
The National Hurricane Center said major hurricane winds were expected over the Florida Keys at daybreak.
Tampa has not been hit by a major hurricane since 1921, when its population was about 10,000, said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen. Today the area has around 3 million people and includes two of Florida’s biggest cities: Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Armed with the new forecast, Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, ordered 260,000 more people to leave. A hurricane warning was in effect for both coasts of the Florida peninsula up through central parts of the state.
In one of the biggest evacuations
ever ordered in the U.S., about 6.3 million people in Florida — more than onequarter of the state’s population — have now been told to clear out from threatened areas and an additional 540,000 were directed to move away from the Georgia coast.
The storm’s center is now expected to miss Miami, but the metro area will still get pounded with life-threatening winds, Feltgen said.
Emergency management officials said they were concerned about a trend of people who evacuated their homes opting to go back home now that Irma’s track has veered toward the Gulf Coast.
Brevard County communications director Don Walker said some people left one of the county’s 21 designated hurricane shelters and asked whether they could return if necessary. The answer is yes, but, ideally, they would continue to stay at the shelter until the storm passes.
“It’s still going to be a dangerous situation,” Walker said. “Don’t make a dumb decision. Stay put until the all-clear is issued by emergency officials,” which likely would be Monday afternoon at the earliest.
When the 300-mile wide storm roars ashore, it will act like a giant buzzsaw as it plows up the state’s west coast Sunday into Monday, battering cities such as Key West, Naples, Fort Myers, Sarasota, and the Tampa-St. Pete area with hurricane-force winds, torrential rain, and devastating storm-surge inundation. Storm surge, the wall of sea water that roars ashore as a hurricane makes landfall, inundating coastal areas, will be “dangerous” and “lifethreatening” for people who didn’t evacuate.