Anxiety Rises on East Coast as Hurricane Emily Nears : Weather: With past storms fresh in mind, residents stock up. Forecasters say system is taking a path likely to spare South Florida.

One year and four days after Hurricane Andrew ripped into southern Florida, anxiety ran up the East Coast like an intensifying fever Saturday as Hurricane Emily approached from the Atlantic Ocean.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center at Coral Cables said Emily, the first full-blown hurricane of the season, was at least two days away from striking land and that its target could be anywhere between Miami and Cape Hatteras, N.C.

Late Saturday, the storm was moving northwest at 10 m.p.h. and was about 690 miles southeast of South Carolina, weather officials said. Top sustained winds were estimated at near 85 m.p.h.

Hurricane watches may go up today. Areas of concern ranged from central Florida to the Carolinas, said Bob Sheets, director of the hurricane center.

Sheets said Emily is a “fairly large system” with the potential to bring heavy rainfall. He said forecasters should be able to narrow down where the storm will hit the coast sometime today.

By Saturday afternoon, forecasters had detected a northwesterly curve to the storm’s path, and southern Florida seemed likely to dodge Emily.

But neither time nor distance did much to assuage the fears of concerned coastal residents, especially those thousands in southern Florida who lived through Andrew.

“People just aren’t going to be caught unprepared again,” said John Ruf, manager of Home Depot in Perrine, Fla., a store that was virtually destroyed by Andrew on Aug. 24, 1992.

He said the largest demand was for plywood, used to board up windows. At one point Saturday morning, 8-foot-by-5-foot plywood sheets were selling at the rate of 600 an hour, he said.

Robert Bottoms, manager of a supermarket in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., said shoppers were stocking up on “water, batteries, lamp oil, canned goods--the usual stuff.” He said bottled water was selling up to six times faster than normal.

At the Windjammer lounge on the Isle of Palms, S.C., about 50 people paused from their revelry to watch a televised news conference and hear some words of caution from Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, who went through the devastating Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

“I think people are definitely worried about it,” said Kai Dilling, a bartender at the Windjammer, known for its pre-hurricane parties. “I’d hate for it to hit here again. Hugo went right on through us last time.”

Elsewhere in South Carolina, the Charleston County Emergency Preparedness Division has put all county agencies on 24-hour alert.

Forecasters said Emily is a typical hurricane for this time of year, the peak of the tropical storm season, and its path across the Atlantic is similar to that of Andrew.

Born as a wave of low pressure off the coast of Africa on Aug. 16, the storm was identified as a tropical depression last Sunday, and gained hurricane status Friday when its winds topped 74 m.p.h., the minimum threshold.

With at least two days before landfall, Emily has time and plenty of warm water ahead, key ingredients for adding to a hurricane’s strength, forecasters said. Still, some computer models suggest that Emily is unlikely to grow into more than a Category 3 storm, with winds of more than 111 m.p.h. Andrew was a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds estimated at 145 m.p.h.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.