Floridians move out of way before Frances moves in

VERO BEACH, Fla. – The outer bands of Hurricane Frances, a haggard but colossal storm, began lashing eastern Florida’s deserted beach towns Friday night. The full force of the storm is expected to strike today, bringing furious winds and more than a foot of rain to a beleaguered state that is still digging out from the last hurricane.

The strength and track of the last storm, Hurricane Charley, caught hundreds of thousands of Floridians by surprise three weeks ago. Frances is three times Charley’s size, and residents took no chances this time.

More than 2.5 million people cleared out of the path of the storm, causing a massive bottleneck Friday in northern Florida and southern Georgia. The evacuation bordered on chaos in some areas, with gas shortages and traffic jams so bad that parents were seen holding their toddlers out car windows to urinate on the road. Hotels were booked as far away as Atlanta, more than 500 miles from the likely strike zone here.

“We had ‘Hurricane 101’ three weeks ago,” said Dale Brill, a vice president of Visit Florida, a tourism and travel-planning organization. “If my mother tells me not to touch the stove and I do it anyway, the second time I’m going to pay attention.”

Frances settled over the Bahamas on Friday, pounding the islands with up to 20 inches of rain. In Nassau, the hurricane knocked out power, shattered windows, dislodged roofs and uprooted trees. Heavy surf destroyed boats. Frances claimed her first victim – a teenager electrocuted while refueling his family’s generator.

Though the storm slowed down and weakened a bit, a hurricane warning remained in effect along Florida’s populous eastern coast. By 8 p.m., Frances’ sustained winds had died down from a peak of about 145 mph to about 105 mph, making it a Category 2 storm on the five-step intensity scale. But that’s still a powerful storm, and state officials expect it to strengthen as it passed today over the 88-degree waters of the Gulf Stream, which hugs the coast of Florida.

With the enormous weather system now plodding toward the northwest at just 4 mph, it could eventually cover the width of Florida and linger over the state for more than 24 hours – and at least two cycles of high tides.

That could produce as much as 20 inches of rain in some places, coupled with a storm surge that could be five feet higher than normal levels on the coast. Though people typically fixate on the wind that batters the coast during a hurricane, the rain that follows could be far more destructive this time, officials said.

Don Daniels, emergency management coordinator for St. Lucie County, north of West Palm Beach and home to 200,000 people, said a heavy afternoon downpour is often enough to flood the county.

“We are a swamp to begin with,” Daniels said. “If we get 10 to 15 inches of rain, a lot of areas of Florida are going to be under water.”

The eye of the storm is expected to make landfall this afternoon or evening near Vero Beach.

The rains could also decimate crops. Large agricultural areas – including the bulk of the state’s citrus industry, 20 percent of which was destroyed by Charley – lie not far from the coast here.