"You can't outrun a hurricane," Bush warns as Hurricane Charley churns toward Tampa Bay.
By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published August 13, 2004
TALLAHASSEE -- As Hurricane Charley crossed over Cuba and began a fateful path toward Tampa Bay Friday morning, Gov. Jeb Bush and emergency officials made a final plea for coastal area residents to evacuate. By Friday afternoon, it may be too late, he said.
"There will be a point in time later on today where it won't be safe to be driving, and then the strategy will change," Bush said at an 8 a.m. briefing. "The strategy then will be to restrict the flow of traffic into the impacted areas from up north, and to make sure that people don't get on the roads too late to be in the middle of a hurricane on our interstates."
As the exodus from the coastal areas intensified, officials said Interstate 75 and I-275 could be absorbing record traffic counts. They said I-75 is absorbing 1,500 cars an hour or about 500 cars an hour more than normal. Bush said the state may close I-75 to southbound traffic by Friday afternoon.
"Common sense would dictate, you can't outrun a hurricane," Bush said.
Bush urged residents to heed the orders in their counties.
The state activated its emergency information phone line: (800) 342-3557.
At a morning briefing at the state Emergency Operations Center, officials said up to 1.4-million people had left their homes. Those county totals included 600,000 people in Hillsborough, 380,000 in Pinellas, 168,000 in Pasco and 84,000 in Sarasota.
The storm is expected to make landfall by 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. tonight, bringing storm surges of up to 13 feet and hurricane-force winds of 115 miles per hour. A state meteorologist said Charley was "one mile an hour" below a Category 3 hurricane.
Bush and state officials said the hurricane force winds will also impact inland areas, including Lake, Sumter, Marion and Alachua counties, and they stressed that tornadoes will pose a threat.
"Even if you're not on the coast, this is a very strong hurricane," said Craig Fugate, Florida's emergency operations director.
"Our fears of yesterday are coming true," Bush said at an 8 a.m. briefing. "This is a really serious storm."
The National Guard was mobilizing 1,000 soldiers to or special active duty. Five damage assessment teams were moving into position to begin calculating the extent of Charley's destruction.
Bush said 2,500 trucks are already in position to begin removing debris and restoring electric power after the storm passes. But the preliminary estimates were very grim, with $11.5-billion in building damage, another $3.6-billion in damages to contents of buildings, and 5.3-million tons of debris.
Such extensive damage will hurt Florida's economy, while also forcing officials to open a catastrophic insurance fund known as a CAT fund, Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher said Friday morning.
Gallagher said the CAT fund is automatically activated when damages exceed $4-billion.
Kentucky was the first state to send in a team of disaster preparedness team to help Florida coordinate requests for other states for help. National Guard helicopters from Mississippi and Alabama were on the way.
Private utility companies from across the state were moving to staging areas, close to the areas expected to be hit most heavily by the hurricane.
State meteorologist Ben Nelson said the state's best hope was for Charley to weaken as it approached landfall. But he described a devastating scenario in which coastal areas and parts of downtown Tampa could be totally submerged.
He described a scenario in which Pinellas county could be so flooded the county would become "an island."
"There's going to be a sudden rise of water," Nelson said. "It does come on quickly."
