Hurricane Charley slams into Florida
The approach of the rare and powerful Category 4 storm, the second strongest on the hurricane intensity scale, prompted evacuation orders for nearly 2 million people, shut down Disney World’s central Florida theme parks and sent US warships out to sea.
Blamed for four deaths in Jamaica and Cuba, Charley threatened to swamp seaside buildings from the tourist islands of Sanibel and Captiva, off the southwest coast, to downtown Tampa.
Emergency managers in Tampa, St Petersburg and Clearwater, the three largest cities in the area, urged people to move from beach communities, flood-prone lowlands and mobile home parks.
Officials estimated that hundreds of thousands headed to higher ground, settling in hotels or public shelters.
Many in Charley’s path stocked up on plywood, generators, flashlights and other emergency and clean-up supplies.
Shortly before noon, Florida Governor Jeb Bush urged residents who had not left home yet to stay put.
“This is not the time to be getting on the interstate (motorway).
“It is time to seek a safe place to be with family and friends inside of your region,” Bush said.
Bush said he had sought a federal disaster declaration from President George W Bush, his brother.
In the early hours, Charley had raced across Cuba, ripping apart roofs, downing power lines and yanking up huge palm trees and battering Havana with high wind and heavy rain.
The hurricane was arriving a day after Tropical Storm Bonnie came ashore in the Florida Panhandle and quickly moved north.
About 6.5 million of Florida’s 17 million residents were in Charley’s projected path, including about 700,000 elderly people, officials said.
The evacuation request was Florida’s biggest since 1999, when Hurricane Floyd prompted an order for a record 1.3 million people to evacuate the state’s east coast.
Charley’s evacuation could break that record, said Craig Fugate, the state’s emergency management director.
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