2 Million Are Urged to Flee Floyd

Wind and the early rain of Hurricane Floyd, a storm bigger than half of California, licked across silver-sand beaches stretching from Florida north to the Carolinas on Tuesday as 2 million people were urged to flee and residents of the Bahamas began assessing their damage.

Floyd churned northwest, and forecasters said it could strike the southeastern United States with full force late today. They called it a Category 4 storm, as powerful as Hurricane Andrew, which killed 26 people and caused $25 billion worth of damage when it hit South Florida in 1992. Andrew killed four people in the Bahamas. During Floyd, there were no early reports of deaths.

At 11 p.m. EDT, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Floyd was centered north of the Bahamas, about 170 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral, Fla., and 460 miles south of Wilmington, N.C. It was 600 miles across, hurling 140-mph winds in a huge, howling circle. Its eye appeared to be headed toward the northern portion of an arc extending from Cocoa Beach, Fla., to Wilmington.

President Clinton, who was visiting New Zealand after a Southeast Asian summit, declared a federal state of emergency in Florida and Georgia and cut short his trip by canceling a stopover in Hawaii. He was scheduled to return to Washington by this evening.

All along the coast, people prepared for the worst. For the first time in its 28-year history, Walt Disney World closed early because of the weather. Other Orlando-area attractions, including Universal Studios and Sea World, shut down as well. Hundreds of airline flights were canceled in Florida and Georgia.

As Floyd shifted a bit toward the northeast, hurricane warnings were dropped for Miami and Fort Lauderdale, but the all-clear came 24 hours after schools and stores were shut and hundreds of thousands of residents had left. Some huddled in their homes, darkened by storm shutters and plywood nailed over their windows.

Most of Miami Beach was a ghost town. Thousands of tourists and beach residents had obeyed mandatory evacuation orders issued by county officials on Monday night. They left behind boarded-up beach homes and shuttered seafront resorts for inland emergency shelters and hotels.

But the anarchic spirit of Miami Beach refused to succumb. Windsurfers, Jet Skiers and sun worshipers dodged squalls and braved four-foot waves, deadly undertows and police cruisers broadcasting loudspeaker warnings that it was illegal for them to be on the beach, let alone in the storm-whipped Atlantic.

On trendy South Beach, police began issuing $50 tickets to storm-scoffers and threatened arrests under a law prohibiting people on city parkland after legal hours. After several frustrating hours and a handful of citations, the police gave up.

At midafternoon, a man dressed in a chicken suit pranced along the strand, inviting a smattering of beach-goers to a hurricane party. A local television reporter took credit for chasing him off. But by sunset, plywood boards were coming down and storm shutters were going up just in time for happy hour.

“Thank God,” declared Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas. “We really were spared a major, major hurricane.”

In Broward County, Sheriff Ken Jenne said 99% of its trailer park residents heeded police orders and left their homes. Lisanne Dion, who answered phones at a county rumor control desk, said 15% of her calls were from out of state.

Farther north in Georgia, residents expected to experience at least part of the landfall.

“All I’m hearing is people wanting to get out,” said Janice Blunt, a volunteer for a county hotline in Savannah. “We tell them we’re coming to get them, we’re moving along--that southern way. We’re just answering calls and calming people down and getting along with getting them as fast as we can.

“A lot of people are very frightened,” she said.

Downtown Savannah was deserted except for essential personnel, said Pete Nichols, a Chatham County information officer. “We issued a mandatory evacuation.”

The Georgia Regional Hospital-Savannah, a facility for mental patients, evacuated everyone to the Central State Psychiatric Hospital about 150 miles away.

“At any time, we can have upward of 150 patients and 450 staff,” said Jim Goggins, a security chief at Georgia Regional. “[Right now] the hospital is totally deserted. . . . It looks like it was brand new and never occupied.

“The highways, all of them, are currently jammed, bumper to bumper,” Goggins said. The early winds of Hurricane Floyd were ominous. “We have very mild winds,” he said. “[But] it’s beginning to cloud up.”

Among those who took to the highways was Heidi Gillispie, 22, who holed up at a hotel far inland at Macon. “I am a military wife,” she said, “and I was based on King’s Bay naval base, a submarine base in St. Mary’s, Ga.

“My husband is out to sea, so I have no family around me and no place to go. One of my bosses, who was transferred to Macon, told me to come where he was. . . . He booked me a room and place for animals.

“I’m a little bit nervous,” Gillispie said. “I’m at risk of losing everything. I’ve been married for a little over a year, and everything my husband and I have worked for is left behind.”

Still farther north along the coast, officials in Charleston, S.C., evacuated Memorial Hospital, a small facility with 27 patients. They were taken across town by ambulance to the Medical University of South Carolina.

“Our most difficult patients to evacuate are critically ill patients, those who are on ICUs, ventilators and multiple equipment--drips and those kids of things,” said Nancy Pope, a safety officer at Memorial.

Pope said her parents, in a shelter at Orlando, Fla., wished her well. “If I was not on the A-Team,” she said, “I would be someplace else.”

At the Medical University of South Carolina, officials stocked additional emergency supplies and back-up generators. They added extra staff. Two chaplains were on duty to assure patients and staff members, some of whom lost everything during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Hugo killed 29 people and did $5.9 billion worth of damage.

In nearby Beaufort County, William Winn, the director of emergency preparedness, said that Floyd’s worst-case scenario “scares me.”

“The potential destruction is catastrophic,” he said. “We may not recognize the community when we come back.”

During a meeting broadcast on cable television, Beaufort Councilman Thomas Taylor urged residents to leave.

“It’s hard for people who have not seen it to really imagine,” said Taylor, who visited Charleston two days after Hugo. “But when a storm the size of Floyd heads your way, there isn’t but one thing to do, and that is to get the heck out of the way.”

In the Bahamas, residents suffered much after Floyd blew through.

The storm swept across the islands of San Salvador and Cat and struck a hard blow at Eleuthera, home to more than 10,000 people. It ripped off their roofs and flooded their homes, but most had fled.

A Club Med resort on Eleuthera had closed for the season. At another, on San Salvador, guests sat out the storm in an 11-story glass building, resort representatives told Associated Press in Miami.

In Nassau, the capital, authorities lost telephone links through the archipelago. “We can’t get through to San Salvador or Cat Island,” Melanie Roach, a government official, told AP.

On New Providence Island, rescuers pushed their way through three feet of water filled with debris to reach homeowners who had lost their roofs. Floodwater pushed cars around, and wind hurled tree limbs, roof shingles and fruit through the air.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Claudia Kolker in Houston, Edwin Chen in New Zealand and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles and researchers Anna Virtue, Lianne Hart and Nona Yates.

For updates, go to The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com

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Floyd’s Fury

Hurricane Floyd is one of the strongest storms to ever threaten the U.S. Scores of residents from Florida to North Carolina have evacuated their coastal homes. Floyd’s eye was expected to strike land somewhere north of Florida today.