Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Irma slams Cuba, heads for Tampa
‘Just get out if its way,’ Trump tells Floridians
NAPLES, Fla. — Hurricane Irma, packing 125 mph winds, whipped at palm trees and kicked up the surf as it spun late Saturday toward Florida on a revised projected track that put Tampa — not Miami — in its cross hairs.
Tampa has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in nearly a century.
The storm’s westward swing overnight Friday caught many people off guard Saturday along Florida’s Gulf Coast and triggered an abrupt change in storm preparations. Evacuations were ordered in the Tampa area, and shelters there soon filled up.
The window for escape narrowed Saturday for the powerful storm projected to
hit mainland Florida sometime today. By 9 p.m. Saturday, winds near hurricane force were recorded in the Florida Keys.
“This is your last chance to make a good decision,” Gov. Rick Scott warned residents Saturday afternoon in Florida’s evacuation zones, which encompassed 6.4 million people, or more than 1 in 4 people in the state.
Irma — at one point the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic — left more than 20 people dead across the Caribbean. It battered Cuba during the day Saturday, leaving widespread destruction.
President Donald Trump on Saturday urged any U.S. residents still in Hurricane Irma’s path to “just get out of its way” and not worry about possessions. He monitored the storm’s advance from the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Trump said Irma is a “storm of enormous destructive power, and I ask everyone in the storm path to heed all instructions, get out of its way.”
“Property is replaceable but lives are not, and safety has to come first,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, where he and the first lady were spending the weekend. “Don’t worry about it. Just get out of its way.”
For days, forecast models showed the storm slamming the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people head-on. But that slowly changed as the storm drew near to the U.S. mainland.
By Saturday evening, meteorologists were predicting that Irma’s center would blow ashore this morning, hammering the low-lying Florida Keys, then hugging the state’s western coast and hitting the Tampa Bay area by Monday morning.
Irma began making a wide northerly turn late Saturday around the southern edge of Florida that could take it straight up the state’s west coast.
For decades, disaster officials and meteorologists have listed the Tampa region as among the worst-case hurricane scenarios, along with Miami, New Orleans, Houston and New York. Hurricanes have hit the other four cities in the past 25 years, but Tampa has not been struck by a major hurricane since 1921, when its population was about 10,000, National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. Now the area has around 3 million people.
“It’s certainly one of those metropolitan areas where we have one of the greatest concerns, particularly with storm surge, particularly with inexperience,” Feltgen said.
Irma is bigger than the entire state of Florida, and although Miami is not projected to receive a direct hit, “that doesn’t mean we won’t have 20 inches of rain, storm surge,” said Feltgen, who is based in Miami. “We’re going to have a hurricane here.”
Feltgen said he worries that people will misinterpret the forecast-track change that puts Miami out of predicted area for Irma’s eye. Irma is so large that even if the eye is to the west, southeast Florida will get dangerous winds and water.
High wind, tornadoes and heavy rainfall of up to 20 inches are forecast for most of Florida.
Irma is likely to remain a hurricane as it chugs north through Florida and perhaps to the Georgia line, Feltgen said. Georgia will get at least tropical-storm-force winds.
STORM PREPARATIONS
The revised track shows Irma threatening everything from Tampa Bay’s bustling twin cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg to Naples’ mansionand yacht-lined canals, Sun City Center’s retirement homes, and Sanibel Island’s shell-filled beaches.
By late morning Saturday, few businesses in St. Petersburg and its barrier islands had put plywood or hurricane shutters over their windows, and some locals grumbled about the change in the forecast.
“For five days, we were told it was going to be on the east coast, and then 24 hours before it hits, we’re now told it’s coming up the west coast,” said Jeff Beerbohm, a 52-year-old entrepreneur in St. Petersburg. “As usual, the weatherman … I don’t know why they’re paid.”
Irma weakened from a Category 5 storm with 185 mph winds earlier last week to a Category 3 late Saturday after passing over Cuba. But it was expected to strengthen again before reaching Florida.
Nearly all of the Florida coastline was under hurricane watches and warnings Saturday, and anxious residents watched Irma’s track projections.
Forecasters warned of storm surge as high as 15 feet.
“This is going to sneak up on people,” said Jamie Rhome, head of the hurricane center’s storm surge unit.
With the forecast revised, Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, ordered 260,000 people to evacuate. Motorists heading inland from the Tampa area were allowed to drive on highway shoulders, and Georgia scaled back its evacuation orders for some of its coastal areas.
By Saturday morning, more than 75,000 people had already lost electricity in Florida, mostly in and around Miami and Fort Lauderdale, as the wind began gusting.
More than 75,000 people statewide sought refuge at over 400 shelters — mostly in schools, community centers and churches.
Scott said the state needed 1,000 nurses to volunteer at the shelters, particularly at sites that handle people with special needs.
In Miami-Dade County, authorities told homeless people Friday that they could voluntarily go to shelters or they would be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals. At least six were involuntarily committed.
Late Saturday in Key West, 60-year-old Carol Walterson Stroud sought refuge in a senior center with her husband, granddaughter and dog. The streets were nearly empty, shops were boarded up and the wind started to blow.
“Tonight, I’m sweating,” she said. “Tonight, I’m scared to death.”
At Germain Arena not far from Fort Myers, on Florida’s southwestern corner, thousands of people waited in a snaking line for hours to get a spot in the hockey venue that is now a shelter.
“We’ll never get in,” Jamilla Bartley lamented as she stood in the parking lot Saturday afternoon.
ARKANSAS PITCHES IN
In the Orlando area, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World all prepared Saturday to be closed today. The Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando airports shut down, and the Tampa airport planned to do the same later Saturday. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge spanning Tampa Bay also closed Saturday.
The governor activated all 7,000 members of the Florida National Guard, and 30,000 guardsmen from elsewhere were on standby.
In Arkansas, the state Game and Fish Commission said late Saturday that 28 wildlife officers will head to Florida to assist the areas hardest hit by the storm.
Also Saturday, Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville said in a statement that aircraft and their crews assigned to military installations in Florida and along the East Coast were flying to the base in Arkansas until it is safe for them to return. More than 400 personnel from Hurlburt Field in Florida flew to the Arkansas air base ahead of the storm.
“Our military weather professionals continue to monitor Hurricane Irma,” said Col. Christopher Lambert, 19th Airlift Wing vice commander at the base.
“We stand ready to support our brothers and sisters in arms, and our thoughts and prayers are with the communities affected by the storm,” he said.
High winds from Irma ravaged Cuban coastal cities during the day Saturday, upending trees, toppling utility poles and scattering debris across streets. Roads were blocked, and witnesses said a provincial museum near the eye of the storm was in ruins.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba, but 22 Irma-related deaths have been reported across the Caribbean, including on the lush resort islands as St. Martin, St. Barts, St. Thomas, Barbuda and Anguilla.
Late Saturday afternoon, the U. S. State Department helped more than 500 Americans fly out of St. Martin, starting with those in need of urgent medical care, said spokesman Heather Nauert.
Concern grew Saturday that Irma’s mammoth size and strength and its projected track, could prove to be one of the most damaging hurricanes ever to hit Florida.
Hurricane Andrew razed Miami’s suburbs in 1992 with winds topping 165 mph, damaging or blowing apart more than 125,000 homes. Andrew’s damage in Florida totaled $26 billion, and at least 40 people died.
Memories of Andrew prompted boat captain Ray Scarborough to evacuate for Irma. He and his girlfriend fled from their home in Big Pine Key and went north to stay with relatives in Orlando. Scarborough was 12 when Andrew hit and remembers lying on the floor in a hall as the storm nearly ripped the roof off his house.
“They said this one is going to be bigger than Andrew. When they told me that,” he said, “that’s all I needed to hear.”