By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 1995; Page A3

MIAMI, AUG. 2—A weak but wet Hurricane Erin struck the Central Florida Atlantic Coast early this morning, with wind gusts measured at up to 100 mph.

The eye wall made land at 1:11 a.m. about 120 miles north of here near Vero Beach, the National Hurricane Center said.

About 70 miles of coastline was battered by sustained winds of 85 mph and sheets of rain. Hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to flee inland and some who stayed lost electricity.

The storm was expected to move inland and cross the state, where it is likely to weaken. Still, that track worries emergency officials.

"As it crosses Central Florida, there's all those mobile homes, and they can be destroyed by these kinds of winds," said Jerry Jarrel, deputy director of the hurricane center.

{Blown transformers and power outages were reported in the central coastal counties early today, the Associated Press reported. There were no estimates of how many customers were out of service because workers had been sent to safe areas to wait out the storm, said Ed Duchene, an emergency supervisor for Florida Power & Light in Miami.}

With sustained winds of only 85 mph, Erin is not considered a monster storm – as Hurricane Andrew was three years ago. But 85 mph sustained winds, with higher gusts, are deadly for the flimsy retirement homes built of aluminum and press wood.

And NASA officials acted cautiously and moved the space shuttle Endeavour from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral to the hangar.

Hurricane Erin is also a very wet, sloppy-looking system and one filled with rain. The storm brought a surge of five to eight feet of water. The weather experts here predicted that Erin could dump from three to six inches of rain on an already soaked state. Florida has had an unseasonably rainy summer and all the canals that drain the state are open, but filled.

"The flood could be a real problem," said Bob Burpee, director of the hurricane center.

For much of the day, the attention was focused on South Florida as a possible landfall before the storm turned north over the Bahamas.

In Broward and Dade counties, more than 700,000 residents were ordered to evacuate low-lying and coastal areas. But many disregarded the "mandatory evacuation" notice and instead kept an eye on the continuous news broadcasts on all the local channels and by last night hurricane warnings were lifted for Dade County, which includes Miami, and Broward County, just to the north.

But South Florida's major airports were shut yesterday because of the storm. Most of them plan to reopen today. American, the major carrier in Miami, said it expected to resume normal service at noon today.

Palm Beach International Airport shut down at 1:30 p.m. yesterday. Flights were also canceled at airports in Orlando, Melbourne and Daytona Beach.

Government and businesses were shuttered throughout South Florida. Boats were anchored in the middle of Biscayne Bay. There was heavy buying at the grocery stores and gas stations – but no real panic.

Still, the storm warnings brought back bad memories and jangled some nerves.

"I probably would have totally ignored it if Hurricane Andrew hadn't hit," said Betty Bell, 47, buying hardware for the storm. "I would have totally ignored the whole thing, like I used to."

Jim Stapleton was sealing his house in Fort Lauderdale late in the afternoon. "I moved up here, like so many people, after Andrew and now it looks like bad weather is just following me," Stapleton said. When told it looked like Erin was going to veer north and might miss Fort Lauderdale, Stapleton smiled and said, "Quitting time!"

At Norwood Elementary School, an evacuation center in north Dade County, Jim Wich, 49, vacationing in Florida from Baltimore, said he was rousted out of his Miami Beach hotel.

"The police were going door to door, saying to evacuate, so we came here," Wich said. "I was in Homestead a month before Hurricane Andrew, and I couldn't recognize it after it hit. I went through Tropical Storm Agnes in Maryland, and I think that was pretty devastating. I think the authorities here are being extremely careful right now, because when Andrew hit, they were left pretty unprepared."

Special correspondent Gregory Chin contributed to this report.