Hurricane Dorian looking dire
Expected to become Category 4 late Monday or early Tuesday
MIAMI — An increasingly alarming hurricane Dorian menaced a corridor of some 10 million people — and put Walt Disney World and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the crosshairs — as it steamed toward Florida on Friday with the potential to become the most powerful storm to hit the state’s east coast in nearly 30 years.
Becoming scarier with seemingly every update from forecasters, the storm strengthened into an “extremely dangerous” Category 3 in the afternoon and was expected to become a potentially catastrophic Category 4 with winds of almost 225 km/h before blowing ashore late Monday or early Tuesday.
The National Hurricane Center’s projected track showed Dorian hitting around Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is situated, then moving inland over the Orlando area. But because of the difficulty of predicting a storm’s course this far out, forecasters cautioned that practically all of Florida, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, could be in harm’s way.
They warned, too, that Dorian was moving more slowly, which could subject the state to a drawn-out and more destructive pummelling from wind, storm surge and heavy rain.
Trump declared a state of emergency in Florida and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to co-ordinate disaster-relief efforts.
As Dorian closed in, it played havoc with people’s Labour Day weekend plans. Major airlines began allowing travellers to change their reservations without a fee. The major cruise lines began rerouting their ships. Disney World and the other big resorts in Orlando found themselves in the storm’s projected path.
Jessica Armesto and her 1-year-old daughter, Mila, had planned to have breakfast with Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy at Disney World. Instead, Armesto decided to take shelter at her mother’s hurricane-resistant house in Miami, with a kitchen full of nonperishable foods.
“It felt like it was better to be safe than sorry, so we cancelled our plans,” she said.
Still, with Dorian still days away and its track uncertain, Disney and other major resorts held off announcing any closings, and Florida authorities ordered no immediate mass evacuations.
“Sometimes if you evacuate too soon, you may evacuate into the path of the storm if it changes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
He added that when the time comes to order evacuations, he won’t do it “willynilly” and “tell everybody to leave because that may create some problems as well” — as happened in 2017, when then-governor Rick Scott told Floridians across the state to “get out now” ahead of hurricane Irma and an epic traffic jam resulted.
As Dorian drew closer, homeowners and businesses rushed to cover their windows with plywood. Supermarkets ran out of bottled water, and long lines formed at gas stations, with fuel shortages reported in some places.
But the governor said the Florida Highway Patrol would begin escorting fuel trucks to help them get past the lines of waiting motorists and replenish gas stations.
At a Publix supermarket in Cocoa Beach, Ed Ciecirski in the customer service department said the pharmacy was extra busy with people rushing to fill prescriptions. The grocery was rationing bottled water and had run out of dry ice.
“It’s hairy,” the 69-year-old Ciecirski said. But he said he was used to commotion after working for years as a supervisor for the post office.
As of 2 p.m. Friday, Dorian was centred about 1,000 kilometres east of West Palm Beach with winds of 185 km/ and was moving northwest at a slowed-down 16 km/h.