One Million Flee Hurricane’s Path : Storm: Andrew threatens disaster as it roars toward populous southeast Florida. Winds hit 150 m.p.h.

Packing winds of up to 150 m.p.h., Hurricane Andrew bore down on the southeast Florida coast on Sunday, threatening disaster and sending upward of 1 million residents fleeing to safer ground.

Potentially the most powerful storm ever to hit a major American city, it gained strength as it raked the Bahamas on Sunday afternoon, killing at least four people.

Winds were fluctuating between 135 m.p.h. and 150 m.p.h. as the storm approached Florida, officials at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables said, adding that with luck, Andrew might hit land at the lower speed.

Forecasters had feared Andrew could reach Category 5--the worst category with winds topping 155 m.p.h.--as it crossed the Gulf Stream to Florida, but that appeared less likely when the storm began to weaken slightly.

Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles declared a state of emergency Sunday and pleaded with residents to comply promptly with instructions to leave evacuation areas.

With the storm expected to hit the coast about dawn and near high tide, a storm surge of as much as 16 feet is expected, with waves reaching perhaps 30 feet when the eye of the storm hits land. Officials of the National Hurricane Center said that winds of 100 m.p.h. are forecast to extend for a radius of 100 miles from the storm’s eight-mile-wide center.

Evacuations were ordered in coastal areas of Broward and Dade counties and the northern Florida Keys in Monroe County.

“I want to go somewhere way west,” said Irving Goldberg, 73, as he waited to be picked up at a Miami Beach evacuation point. “I want to be out of the area completely.”

“We’re pulling everything out, putting it in the back and boarding it all up with wood,” said Mark Soyka, owner of the News Cafe in Miami Beach. “If the wind blows through, it’ll be a major disaster.”

Forecasters following the storm’s course with satellite photographs worked into the night to pinpoint where it was most likely to strike the state. It appeared that landfall would come somewhere between Palm Beach and the Florida Keys, with experts saying that the most likely location encompasses both Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, the state’s two largest cities, with a total population of nearly 4 million.

Saturday, much of the southeast Florida coast from Titusville to Key West was put under a hurricane watch, with much of that area upgraded to a hurricane warning Sunday. On the Gulf Coast, some 120 miles directly west, residents from the Everglades to Tampa Bay were told to prepare for Andrew’s arrival later Monday.

In a broadcast from the state capital, Tallahassee, Chiles pleaded with Floridians to act “prudently and promptly,” warning that Andrew’s approach carries the potential for huge loss of life.

“This is a very, very dangerous storm. We could lose many, many lives if people stay in these dangerous areas,” Chiles said.

Emergency preparedness officials were concerned that many coastal residents would opt to ride out the storm in their homes and apartments, but hundreds of thousands heeded the warnings from federal, state and local officials.

State law requires total evacuation of such areas, but throughout the threatened region tens of thousands were reluctant to leave, including dozens of surfers on Key Biscayne Bay, who were waiting for waves bigger than any they have ever seen. Failure to obey an evacuation call is a second-degree misdemeanor.

There was concern that the National Hurricane Center itself might see its communications cut off. Sunday afternoon, a team of forecasters was flown to Silver Spring, Md., to be in position to take over should the center at Coral Gables, on the edge of downtown Miami, lose its communications.

For those living in non-evacuation areas, Sunday was a time for concern.

Stores that were nearly empty Saturday night in spite of warnings of impending disaster were clogged with shoppers Sunday as alarmed residents began buying gallons of bottled water, cases of canned food and sheets of plywood.

In some areas, grocery store security agents battled with customers trying to get in buildings already crowded. Throughout the region, residents were putting up shutters and tying down loose objects.

More than 1.1 million people live in designated evacuation areas along the coast, and many of them never have experienced the onslaught of a full-fledged hurricane. Most of the people in the evacuation zones live in high-rise condominium buildings, thought to be especially vulnerable to a severe hurricane.

In addition, many of the affected residents are retirees with less ability to react to a natural disaster. Their plight was evident in the long lines of older people waiting at bus stops for rides to evacuation centers and in the lines of people carrying suitcases and walking across the causeways from Miami Beach to the mainland.

Estimates are that a Category 5 storm would cause as much as $15 billion in damage if it hit South Florida.

The prospect of a monster hurricane has caused warnings for many years about the probable losses that could result from a direct hit in coastal areas that some critics claim have been overbuilt without regard to the consequences of development.

The only consolation to be found on Sunday was that Hurricane Andrew is smaller than Hugo, the hurricane that went ashore at Charleston, S.C., in 1989, causing several billion dollars in damage, and costing more than 500 lives as it swept across the Caribbean.

Paul Hebert, a National Hurricane Center forecaster, said: “Hugo was a monster, but this thing (at least) is compact. The range of destruction is going to be less, but it is still a worst-case scenario because of the population involved and the property involved.”

Scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began tracking Andrew as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa nearly two weeks ago. Not until Aug. 17 did it reach hurricane status, and even after that, it appeared that it would pose no threat to land.

But as it gathered strength Sunday and moved toward Florida at about 18 m.p.h., it raised the possibility that it might cross the state, gain new strength in the Gulf of Mexico and make a second landfall on the Gulf Coast.

As residents moved into churches and schools to take shelter Sunday afternoon, the Air Force evacuated its planes from Homestead Air Force Base, 30 miles south of Miami.

Heavy Coast Guard vessels were sent out to sea to ride out the storm and smaller vessels were secured onshore. Many owners of small boats took them up streams to more sheltered areas.

Florida Light & Power’s four nuclear reactors were shut down when the state government declared an emergency. At Miami International Airport, airlines began trimming back schedules and the airport itself was expected to be closed long before the brunt of the storm hit.

The only Category 5 storms to hit the United States were Camille, which killed 243 people when it hit the Mississippi coast in 1969, and a Labor Day storm that struck the Florida Keys in 1935, killing 405 people.

Dr. Robert Sheets, director of the Hurricane Center, said that Andrew remained a “strong Category 4 hurricane” after it passed over the Bahamas Sunday afternoon.

While he said that he does not expect it to grow stronger before striking the coast, he warned that “no one in Southern Florida will escape damage. We are going to see some damage here that I’d hoped I never would experience.”

Southeast Florida has not experienced a direct hit by a hurricane since Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Hurricane David in 1979 made a run at Miami but veered north into North Florida and Georgia, where it killed 78 people.

There did not appear to be any likelihood that Andrew would make a similar turn away from the Florida coast, officials said, because a large high-pressure area known as a Bermuda High was off the East Coast, blocking any northward shift.

There have been two previous tropical storms in the Pacific this year, but Andrew marked the first hurricane since the season began. Scientists had forecast that the tropical storm season would be late beginning and that it would perhaps be milder than usual because of world climatic conditions.

Worldwide, the average temperature has dropped about one degree over the last year as a result of the third “El Nino” condition in the last decade and the ash cloud caused by the massive eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines.

Tracking the Storm

Hurricanes are ranked one to five according to what is known as the Saffir-Simpson scale of strength:

CATEGORY 1: Hurricane has central pressure of 28.94 inches or more and winds of 74 to 95 m.p.h, is accompanied by a 4-5 foot storm surge and causes minimal damage.

CATEGORY 2: Pressure 28.50 to 28.93 inches, winds from 96 to 110 m.p.h., storm surge 6-8 feet, damage moderate.

CATEGORY 3: Pressure 27.91 to 28.49 inches, winds from 111 to 130 m.p.h., storm surge 9-12 feet, damage extensive.

CATEGORY 4: Pressure 27.17 to 27.90 inches, winds from 131 to 155 m.p.h., storm surge 13-18 feet, damage extreme.

CATEGORY 5: Pressure less than 27.17 inches, winds greater than 155 m.p.h., storm surge higher than 18 feet, damage catastrophic. Only two Category 5 storms have hit the United States since record-keeping began: the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys and killed 400 people and Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969, killing 256 and leaving $1.4 billion damage.

At 10 p.m. EDT Sunday

Position: 25.4N, 77.9W

Moving: West at 16 m.p.h.

Winds: 150 m.p.h.