Leaving devastation and at least 20 deaths behind, Hurricane Wilma roared away from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday and accelerated toward South Florida with 115-mph winds, tornadoes and a surge of seawater that could flood the Keys and the state's southwest coast.
"Cancun is all under water. It reaches for four miles,20 feet high. It's like driving through an ocean," said Anthony Stiles, 31, from Virginia Beach, Va..
"There is nothing in Cancun. There is no electricity. There is no water. There is no food. People are starving. And we had no news about what was going on. Officials wouldn't tell us anything," said Lisa Half, who with Stiles and two other friends were driving to safety in a taxi when they ran into 6 feet of water 50 miles west of Cancun.
Amid pouring rain, others waited to cross the flooded Highway 180 back to Cancun, to bring food and find out how their families are. There are no telephones, Internet or any functioning communication. Entire malls were destroyed.
After crawling slowly through the Caribbean for several days, Wilma pulled away from Mexico as a Category 2 storm and, forecasters said, began picking up speed "like a rocket" as it headed toward the U.S. mainland. The storm gained strength Sunday night, becoming a Category 3 hurricane, and was expected to make landfall about dawn today.
The southern half of the state was under a hurricane warning, and an estimated 160,000 residents were told to evacuate, although many in the low-lying Keys island chain decided to stay.
"I cannot emphasize enough to the folks that live in the Florida Keys: A hurricane is coming," Gov. Jeb Bush said. "Perhaps people are saying, 'I'm going to hunker down.' They shouldn't do that. They should evacuate, and there's very little time left to do so."
At 10 p.m. EDT, Wilma's winds were 115 mph, raising it to Category 3 status. As the storm crossed the Gulf of Mexico, forecasters said they saw no evidence of wind shear that they hoped would reduce the hurricane's intensity before it makes landfall in southwest Florida.
Depending on Wilma's path, it could be South Florida's worst weather since Hurricane Charley opened nature's historic barrage of the state on Aug. 13, 2004.
Forecasters and emergency managers warned of tornadoes, at least 4 to 8 inches of rain and severe coastal flooding in the Florida Keys and in Naples, Marco Island and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico in southwest Florida.
Because the storm was expected to move so swiftly across Florida, residents of Atlantic coast cities such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale were likely to face hurricane-force winds nearly as strong as those on the Gulf Coast, forecasters said.
"I'm disappointed, but I understand it," Roth said. "They're tired of leaving because of the limited damage they sustained during the last three hurricanes."
By Sunday evening, tornado warnings were posted for parts of southwest Florida, and the hurricane's outer bands began lashing coastal areas in Wilma's path. A waterspout was spotted off Key West.
In Palm Beach County, in the center of the danger zone, mandatory evacuation began at 1 p.m. for residents of mobile homes, low-lying areas, substandard housing and recreational vehicles.
Along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee, where a 1928 hurricane caused a flood that killed more than 2,500 people, residents who have spent their lives in the shadow of the 34- to 38-foot high Herbert H. Hoover Dike expressed confidence in the levee system.
The storm could pass right over the lake, but they believe it's in better shape than the levees in New Orleans that failed during Hurricane Katrina.
"They weren't prepared," said Earnest Robinson, a street-maintenance worker in Belle Glade, as he caught catfish. "They weren't equipped like we are."
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