Floridians flee Hurricane Frances

Residents fleeing Hurricane Frances drive north in heavy traffic on Interstate 95 in Viera, Florida, Thursday afternoon. More than a million people threatened by Hurricane Frances were told to clear out Thursday, and residents scrambled to board up homes and stock up on water ahead of what could be Florida's mightiest storm in a decade. PHOTO: AP

Residents tourists in cars, trucks and campers clogged highways Thursday in the biggest evacuation ever ordered in Florida, fleeing inland as mighty Hurricane Frances threatened the state with its second battering in three weeks.

About million residents were told to clear out ahead of what could be the most powerful storm to hit Florida in a decade. Other people in the 480km stretch covered by the hurricane warning rushed to fortify their homes with plywood and storm shutters, and buy water, gas and canned food.

A Category III storm with 200kph winds, Frances could make itself felt in the state by midmorning yesterday.

At 11pm Thursday, the hurricane was centered 530km southeast of West Palm Beach and was moving northwest at close to 15 kph. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 130km from its center.

This could be the first time since 1950 that two major storms have hit Florida so close together. On Aug. 13, Hurricane Charley splintered billions of dollars worth of homes, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and killed 27 people when it tore across the state.

Charley's -- and Frances' tremendous size, at 1,600km across, or about as big as the state of Texas -- prodded people like Linda Silvestri, 58, to get out of the way. Silvestri, who lives in Palm Bay on the central Florida coast, headed inland to Gainesville to be near a hospital because she just received a kidney transplant.

"I hope I have a house when I get back," she said.

The hurricane warning covered most of the state's eastern coast, from Florida City, near the state's southern tip, to Flagler Beach, north of Daytona Beach. Forecasters could not say with certainty where Frances would come ashore, just that it was to strike late yesterday or early today.

About million of Florida's 17 million people live in the areas under hurricane watches and warnings.

Governor Jeb Bush estimated 2.5 million residents were under evacuation orders in 15 Florida counties based on the state's projections of people living in evacuated areas. Individual counties reported at least 1.32 million residents ordered evacuated, basing their estimates on the number of people living in evacuated areas that had left their homes.

Residents tourists streamed inland in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Traffic backed up for miles on sections of Interstate 95, the main north-south highway along the state's east coast, and was also heavy on parts of I-4, which crosses the peninsula to connect Daytona Beach, Orlando and Tampa.

Bush his brother US President George W. Bush to declare Florida a federal disaster area and make storm victims eligible for recovery aid.

Federal promised they had enough people and supplies in the state to handle two disaster-relief operations at once.

"We were successful with Charley because we were massive, overwhelming and fast. For this event I want us to be massive, overwhelming and fast squared," said Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

People to airports, hoping to get out before all flights were grounded. Some trudged through long lines at ticket counters only to find their flights had been canceled. Hotels and motels inland filled up, and gas stations ran dry.

Florida tolls on major roads and said lanes on some highways may be reversed to handle the evacuation traffic.