Hurricane Wilma Barrels Toward Florida
Southwest Coast Braces for Today's Expected Landfall
Charlene Long, background left, and her daughter Christina Long greet Vivica St. Surin, 3, while waiting for Hurricane Wilma in a shelter near Naples.
(By Michel Ducille -- The Washington Post)
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Monday, October 24, 2005
NAPLES, Fla., Oct. 24 -- After lashing Mexico's Cancun region with 135-mph winds, Hurricane Wilma turned to the northeast, intensified into a dangerous Category 3 storm and was barreling toward Florida, where residents took shelter after days of nervous anticipation and emergency preparedness leaders made last-minute pleas to those who resisted mandatory evacuation orders.
Many residents fled the Florida Keys and the coastal areas of Naples and Fort Myers, where evacuations were ordered. Up and down the roadways of southwestern Florida, shopping centers and fast-food restaurants were boarded up, and many neighborhoods seemed nearly deserted.
But thousands of residents stayed in their homes and ignored mandatory evacuation orders, particularly in Key West, where some people disregarded repeated calls to leave, state and local officials said, even though the storm surge was forecast to be five to eight feet above normal tide there and as high as nine to 17 feet where Wilma makes landfall.
"I cannot emphasize enough to the folks that live in the Florida Keys: A hurricane is coming," Gov. Jeb Bush said. "Perhaps people are saying, 'I'm going to hunker down.' They shouldn't do that. They should evacuate, and there's very little time left to do so."
He said 2,400 National Guard troops were mobilized to respond to Hurricane Wilma, and that medical personnel and provisions were ready to be trucked in.
R. David Paulison, the acting director of FEMA, said supplies had been massed in Jacksonville and at Homestead Air Force base in south Miami-Dade County, near the Keys' Monroe County. Paulison said the agency had about a thousand people in Florida, many of them already there because of the earlier hurricanes.
An estimated 15,000 people were in shelters, Red Cross officials said. About 160,000 had been ordered to evacuate in anticipation of Wilma's arrival ashore at dawn Monday.
During Wilma's two-day battering of Mexico, the winds shattered windows, peeled roofs off and propelled the Caribbean Sea into hotel lobbies. On Sunday, looters overran some Cancun stores.
At least three people were killed in Mexico, following the deaths of 13 in Jamaica and Haiti. On Sunday, Wilma's winds hit western Cuba while the eastern side was buffeted by Tropical Storm Alpha as it weakened to a tropical depression forecast to dissipate in a few days in the open Atlantic.
At 1 a.m. Eastern time, Hurricane Wilma was roaring toward southwest Florida at 18 mph with winds that had strengthened to 115 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Wilma was expected to swiftly cross narrow Florida, spin off tornadoes, rain as much as eight inches and batter Atlantic Coast cities with hurricane-strength winds Monday, forecasters said.
Floridians anticipating Wilma's arrival were of two minds about the approaching danger: While some chose to remove themselves from the hurricane's projected path, others chose to stay, in many cases defying ominous warnings from emergency workers who toured some neighborhoods with bullhorns.
