Florida Gov. Rick Scott is warning residents the storm is deadly and will kill them — and is urging Floridians to join the largest mass exodus in state history.
Hurricane Matthew’s deadly march continues toward Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas and nearly 2 million people along the coast were urged to evacuate their homes, a historic flight ahead of a major storm packing power the U.S. hasn’t seen in more than a decade.
Matthew was a dangerous and life-threatening Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 115 mph as it pounded the central Bahamas early Thursday. Forecasters said it’s expected to strengthen over the coming day or so into an even more potent Category 4 hurricanes as it approaches Florida’s Atlantic coast. At least 108 deaths in the Caribbean have been blamed on the storm, with heavy damage reported in Haiti.
The storm was forecast to scrape much of the Florida coast and any slight deviation could mean landfall or it heading farther out to sea. Either way, it was going to be close enough to wreak havoc along the lower part of the East Coast, and many people weren’t taking any chances.
In Melbourne Beach, near the Kennedy Space Center, Carlos and April Medina moved their paddle board and kayak inside the garage and took pictures off the walls of their home about 500 feet from the coast. They moved the pool furniture inside, turned off the water, disconnected all electrical appliances and emptied their refrigerator.
They then hopped in a truck filled with legal documents, jewelry and a decorative carved shell that had once belonged to April Medina’s great-grandfather and headed west to Orlando, where they planned to ride out the storm with their daughter’s family.
“The way we see it, if it maintains its current path, we get tropical storm-strength winds. If it makes a little shift to the left, it could be a Category 2 or 3 and I don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Carlos Medina said. “We are just being a little safe, a little bit more cautious.”
About 20 miles away in the town of Cape Canaveral, John Long said Hurricane Matthew is just hype as his neighbors in his RV park packed up and evacuated inland. Even though his 32-foot RV is just feet from the Banana River and a half mile from the beach, he had no plans to leave.
Long, who owns a bike shop and has lived along the Space Coast for 30 years, said he has a generator and enough food and water for himself and his cats to last a week.
“There’s always tremendous buildup and then it’s no stronger than an afternoon thunderstorm,” he said. “I’m not anticipating that much damage.”
In Fort Lauderdale, about 200 miles south, six employees at a seven-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion packed up for an evacuation fearing any storm surge could flood the property. The homeowners planned to move to another home they own in Palm Beach that’s further from the water. Two Lamborghinis and a Ferrari had been placed inside the garage, but employee Mae White wasn’t sure what they would do with a Rolls Royce, Mustang and other cars still parked in the driveway.
“This storm surge. It’s scary,” White said. “You’re on the water, you’ve got to go.”
The last Category 3 storm or higher to hit the United States was Wilma in October 2005. It made landfall with 120 mph winds in southwest Florida, killing five people as it pushed through the Everglades and into the Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach area. It caused an estimated $21 billion in damage and left thousands of residents without power for more than a week. It concluded a two-year span when a record eight hurricanes hit the state.
As of 2 a.m. Thursday, Matthew was centered about 295 miles southeast of West Palm Beach and moving northwest at 10 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center . Hurricane-force winds extended 45 miles from the center, it said, adding Matthew is forecast to strengthen over the next day or so and become a Category 4 hurricane while approaching Florida’s Atlantic coast.
“When a hurricane is forecast to take a track roughly parallel to a coastline, as Matthew is forecast to do from Florida through South Carolina, it becomes very difficult to specify impacts at any one location,” said National Hurricane Center forecaster Lixion Avila.
Florida can expect as much as 10 inches of rain in some isolated areas.
In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley reversed the lanes of Interstate 26 so that all lanes of traffic were headed west and out of Charleston. It was the first time the lanes had been reversed. Plans to reverse the lanes were put in place after hours-long traffic jams during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
The governor planned to call for more evacuations on Thursday, which would bring the total to about 500,000 people in the state. Florida urged or ordered about 1.5 million to leave the coast, said Jackie Schutz, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott. Georgia had around 50,000 people told to go.
At Folly Beach, South Carolina, southwest of Charleston, Gaby Trompeter loaded her car at her beachfront home preparing to evacuate to Augusta, Georgia.
Trompeter, a 50-year-old goldsmith who designs and makes jewelry, remembers Hurricane Hugo when she stayed in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989.
A year ago when what has been described as a 1,000-year flood inundated South Carolina there was so much water on the road near her house she couldn’t get out for three days.
“If it brings a lot of rain, more than the storm last year, why would I want to stay?” she said.
President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters Wednesday to be briefed on preparations. FEMA has deployed personnel to emergency operation centers in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
On the Georgia coast, 92-year-old Lou Arcangeli saw two of his adult children come to his home on Tybee Island to help prepare and evacuate if necessary.
“It’s serious,” said Arcangeli, who has lived in the Savannah area since 1979, when Hurricane David became the last hurricane to make landfall on Georgia’s 100-mile coast. “I’m going to keep an eye on it and not wait until the last minute. As far as I’m concerned, what’s going to happen is going to happen.”
Farmers in Matthew’s path scrambled to protect their crops. In South Carolina, Jeremy Cannon was harvesting his soybeans a week early after waiting too long before last year’s record rainstorm. He watched his soybeans and cotton crops slowly drown as 20 inches of rain fell, costing him $800,000.
“I don’t want to lose a single soybean this year if I don’t have to,” Cannon said. “The Lord says pray without ceasing. And that’s what I’ve been doing — in the fields, near the barn — just praying all the time. I don’t want to find out what I’ll have to do if I get wiped out for another year.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article
GOD BE WITH ALL OF US!!!!!!!!
I pray we lose no lives..
He was using Florida’s govenor to accomplish that.
Prayers to all in area of this hurricane! GOD with them please Father forget them not!
I hope and pray God will give us all of us a safe life in every moment, He gave our lives and He will save us to all dangers.
God is a great and powerful God, who answers big prayers. Father I pray that the hurricane will head out to sea now and not affect another human live. I plead that blood of Jesus over all threatened areas. No plague can come near your dwelling – your
dwelling being your country – your land – in Jesus Name. Amen. Lets all pray together and see the power of prayer work miracles!
During the past 50 or so years many people have relocated to the Southern US to avoid winter. But of course there are weather issues in the South, too. Here’s a thought-why don’t they build houses in Florida and other hurricane-prone areas that can stand up to a hurricane? They throw together these cheap bungalow houses, and they can’t survive anything close to a tropical storm. Maybe States like Florida should consider tougher housing standards. Build houses and buildings that can withstand at least a 1 or 2 category hurricane.
Arthur do you honestly think that a house could be built to with stand the beating of a cat,5 you must not been through a hurricane as you call cheap material .many houses has come through these hurricane’s andrew was one of the worst that hit Florida.I can’t begin to count the hurricanes I have gone though in Florida and my house withstood each one of them and I have live there for over forty five years.the damage is done from the tornadoes that follow.I have lived in wood houses and block house.what do you consider tougher housing standards?
I was stationed in South Carolina (Marines) from 77-79. After my enlistment I lived and worked in Florida for about a year. There are many cheap sub-standard houses in Florida. For the most part they get away with this, because of mild winters. But every once in a while there’s a major storm, and these flimsy houses just collapse. You get what you pay for.
Same time, man knew very well Mother Nature dominates coastal land and man-made coastal dwellings are temporary. Man builds knowing more cliff will crumble, another Hurricane or tidal wave will come and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it. Personally I’m against using public funding to rebuild private follys that will be wiped out again. And we are being played. Flimsey fishing villages were built in Haiti etc. with understanding they were temporary. Temporary Squatters shacks aiding fishermen in harvesting food from the sea shouldn’t be confused with permanent housing, nor should they be confused with “unexpected losses”. Squatters know their coastal shade shakes are temporary. They plan on it. Human life and bodily harm is spared by giving timely warnings to leave threatened coastal areas … And sure things like disruption of clean water that a Country should prepare to mitigate & doesn’t becomes a worthy humanitarian aid issue but one that should seek a long term ongoing solution instead of fostering reliance on US to beck and call send supplies that honestly this administration very little of funds authorized for “aid” wind up serving its labeled “purpose.” What I’m trying to say is naive bleeding hearts are being robbed blind which does no-one any good except the thieves yanking on strings. We have to exercise our brains in our money matters to do the heart of such matters any good.
Since this is only the start of problems caused natural disasters; we need to realize USA can only take care of only a few of the problems. Making people who come nearer to the end, being stolen from in order to deal with natural disasters. If all political leaders would sound the evacuation notice for voluntary evacuation then I would feel more sorry for their areas. Politicians need to take responsability like the Florida Govenor has.
After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida started enforcing the building codes that had been in place for over 50 years. The barrier islands were
NEVER meant to be built on. You can thank developers and realtors for their greed. My husband has a Florida builder’s license. We have done
trade shows all over the United States. Believe me when I say the are very few states that enforce residential building codes. California and
Florida to name a few. Every section of the country thinks their section of the country has the worst weather. Every person makes their
own decision where to live. God be with the people in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas this week.
No matter where you live, it will always be something. Earthquakes, monsoons, typhoons, tsunamis, volcanoes, blizzards, tornadoes, mudslides, hurricanes just to name a few.