An increasingly alarming Hurricane Dorian menaced a corridor of some 10 million people – and put Walt Disney World and President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the crosshairs – as it steamed toward Florida on Friday with the potential to become the most powerful storm to hit the state’s east coast in nearly 30 years.
Getting scarier with seemingly every update from forecasters, Dorian strengthened into an “extremely dangerous” Category 3 in the afternoon and was expected to become a potentially catastrophic Category 4 with winds of almost 140 mph before blowing ashore late Monday or early Tuesday.
The National Hurricane Center’s projected track showed Dorian hitting around Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is situated, then moving inland over the Orlando area. But because of the difficulty of predicting a storm’s course this far out, forecasters cautioned that practically all of Florida, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, could be in harm’s way.
They warned, too, that Dorian was moving more slowly, which could subject the state to a prolonged and destructive pummeling from wind, storm surge and heavy rain.
Trump declared a state of emergency in Florida and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster-relief efforts.
As Dorian closed in, it played havoc with people’s Labor Day weekend plans. Major airlines began allowing travelers to change their reservations without a fee. The big cruise lines began rerouting their ships. Disney World and the other resorts in Orlando found themselves in the storm’s projected path.
Still, with Dorian days away and its track uncertain, Disney and other major resorts held off announcing any closings, and Florida authorities ordered no immediate mass evacuations.
“Sometimes if you evacuate too soon, you may evacuate into the path of the storm if it changes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
He added that when the time comes to order evacuations, he won’t do it “willy-nilly” and “tell everybody to leave because that may create some problems as well” – as happened in 2017, when then-Gov. Rick Scott told Floridians across the state to “get out now” ahead of Hurricane Irma and an epic traffic jam ensued.
FEMA official Jeff Byard said Dorian is likely to “create a lot of havoc” for roads, power and other infrastructure.
With time running out, homeowners and businesses rushed to cover their windows with plywood. Supermarkets ran out of bottled water, and long lines formed at gas stations, with fuel shortages reported in places. The governor said the Florida Highway Patrol would begin escorting fuel trucks to help them get past the lines of waiting motorists and replenish gas stations.
At a Publix supermarket in Cocoa Beach, Ed Ciecirski of the customer service department said the pharmacy was extra busy with people rushing to fill prescriptions. The grocery was rationing bottled water and had run out of dry ice.
“It’s hairy,” he said.
Dorian could prove to be the strongest hurricane to hit Florida’s Atlantic Coast since Andrew, a Category 5 that obliterated thousands of homes south of Miami with winds topping 165 mph in 1992.
An estimated 10 million people live in the 13 Florida counties with the highest likelihood of seeing hurricane-force winds from Dorian by Wednesday morning. After passing through Florida, it is expected to rake the Southeast coast through the Carolinas.
Coastal areas could get 6 to 12 inches of rain, with 18 inches in some places, triggering life-threatening flash floods, the hurricane center said.