Key West, Fla. – Rain pounded Key West early today as Hurricane Wilma accelerated toward storm-weary Florida, threatening residents with 115-mph winds, tornadoes and a surge of seawater that could flood the state’s southwest coast and the Keys.
The Category 3 hurricane was expected to make landfall before dawn along the state’s southwest coast, likely near Naples and Marco Island, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield said. He warned that the storm surge in the area could reach 14 to 19 feet.
Once ashore, the fast-moving hurricane was expected to slice northeast across the state at up to 25 mph, with the Atlantic Coast likely to get winds nearly as strong as those hitting the Gulf Coast.
Tornadoes spun off ahead of Wilma already had damaged a restaurant in Cocoa Beach and an orchid nursery on Merritt Island.
“I cannot emphasize enough to the folks that live in the Florida Keys: A hurricane is coming,” Gov. Jeb Bush told residents Sunday afternoon.
The entire southern Florida peninsula has been under a hurricane warning since Saturday, and an estimated 160,000 residents were told to evacuate, but many in the low-lying Keys stayed.
“They’re going to be in deep trouble,” warned Billy Wagner, Monroe County emergency management director.
Forecasters had been warning for days of flooding from a storm surge of up to 17 feet on the southwest coast and 8 feet in the Keys, where streets were already running with water Sunday night.
Despite the repeated warnings, fewer than 10 percent of the Keys’ 78,000 residents evacuated, Monroe County Sheriff Richard Roth said.
“I’m disappointed, but I understand it,” Roth said. “They’re tired of leaving because of the limited damage they sustained during the last three hurricanes.”
Wilma was Florida’s eighth hurricane since August 2004 and the fourth evacuation of the Keys this year.
The latest hurricane had already proved it has damaging potential. Wilma battered the Mexican coastline with howling winds and torrential rains, killing at least three people. Thirteen others died in Jamaica and Haiti.
In Florida, the National Guard was on alert, and state and federal officials had trucks of ice and food ready to deploy. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was poised to send in dozens of military helicopters and 13.2 million ready-to-eat meals if needed.
Gov. Bush also wrote his brother, President Bush, asking that Florida be granted a major disaster declaration for 14 counties.
Many of the areas bracing for Wilma were hit by hurricanes in the past two years.
At 10 p.m. MDT Sunday, Wilma was centered about 115 miles west of Key West and 160 miles southwest of Naples, moving northeast at 18 mph. Hurricane- force wind of at least 74 mph extended up to 85 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds reached outward up to 230 miles, the hurricane center said.
A wind gust of 60 mph was measured at Key West shortly after midnight EDT, and rain was lashing the island chain.
It was markedly different than conditions Sunday morning in the Keys, when sunshine beckoned boaters onto the water and many residents went about their normal routines.
“We were born and raised with storms, so we never leave,” Ann Ferguson said from her front porch in Key West. “What happens, happens.”
Some 100 Key West parishioners attended Mass at a Catholic church where a grotto built in the 1920s is said to provide protection from dangerous storms.
In Palm Beach County, a 12-year-old girl was in critical condition after her skull was fractured as she and her mother tried to help a neighbor install hurricane shutters, sheriff’s spokesman Paul Miller said.
At least four tornadoes and a waterspout were spotted as the massive storm system moved in, and half the state’s population was under a tornado watch this morning.
On Florida’s Gulf Coast, evacuation orders covered barrier islands and coastal areas in Collier and Lee counties, such as Fort Myers Beach, Marco Island, Sanibel and parts of Naples.
Visitors crossing the bridge into Marco Island were greeted by an electric sign that flashed, “EVACUATE, EVACUATE.”
More than 22,600 people were in shelters across the state, including roughly 850 people at the Germain Arena near Fort Myers.
