Officials warned about a million residents and tourists along Flo-rida's Gulf Coast to get out of the way of Hurricane Charley, saying parts of Tampa's downtown and nearby areas could be submerged by the massive storm surge likely when the hurricane was expected to strike yesterday.
"It does have the potential of devastating impact ... This is a scary, scary thing," Florida Governor Jeb Bush said on Thursday.
The evacuation zone stretched along Florida's west coast from Key West to north of Tampa.
Charley was expected to pass west of the Keys at Florida's tip early yesterday before hitting the Tampa Bay area in the afternoon with winds up to 193kph, heavy rain, tornadoes and the dangerous storm surge, said Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. With winds that high, it would be a powerful Category 3 hurricane.
Radar showed the first rain bands hitting the lower Keys on Thursday night.
Residents of the Tampa Bay area, where the eye is projected to hit, southward to the Naples area were told to expect a storm surge of 3m to 4m. State meteorologist Ben Nelson said the surge could reach 4.8m in the Tampa area if Charley reaches 193kph wind.
The bulk of the evacuations were in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, which include Tampa and St. Petersburg, a city that sits on a peninsula.
All residents of MacDill Air Force Base, on another peninsula in Tampa Bay, were ordered out, with only essential personnel remaining. MacDill is home to US Central Command, the nerve center of the war in Iraq.
"There will be a period of time where if you stay behind and you change your mind and you want to be rescued, no one can help you. We aren't going to go out on a suicide mission," Pinellas Emergency Management Chief Gary Vickers told people in the evacuation zone.
Heavy traffic flowed across the three Tampa Bay bridges linking Pinellas with Hillsborough and the mainland. Officials worried about traffic jams yesterday morning.
"The highway system was never designed to move this many people this quickly," state emergency management director Craig Fugate said.
Charley became a Caribbean hurricane on Wednesday, moving past Jamaica and over the Cayman Islands. At 2am yesterday (2pm in Taiwan), the hurricane's eye was over Cuba, 22.5km west of downtown Havana.
Forecasters said Charley had top sustained winds of about 169kph. It was moving north-northwest at about 22.5kph and was expected to strengthen, meteorologists said.
Charley roared across Cuba early yesterday, battering Havana with high winds and heavy rans before taking aim on the western coast of Florida.
Charley began pummeling the Isle of Youth off the main island's southwestern coast with heavy rains and high winds on Thursday afternoon. Cuban and US forecasters said storm surge flooding of up to 4.5m was expected along Cuba's southern shores.
Rainfall totals of up to 20cm and related flash flooding was considered likely where Charley hits.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
More than 149,000 people were evacuated in western and central Cuba as the storm approached and Havana's international airport was closed, along with major seaports, Cuba's official National Information Agency reported.
Only minimal damage was reported in the Caymans Islands, where Charley hit earlier on Thursday when it was a much weaker Category 1 storm. In Jamaica, a man was killed as he disappeared trying to rescue six other people from rising flood waters on Wednesday night.
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