Wilma Puts Residents On Edge

Hurricane Wilma, the most intense storm to form in the Americas, lashed Caribbean coastlines on Wednesday as it lumbered toward Mexico's Cancun resort and Florida, leaving 12 dead and forcing the cancellation of an MTV awards event and a college football game.

Heavy rains from Wilma's outer bands forced evacuations in Honduras, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti. Officials began evacuating the Florida Keys, and the White House expressed concern about the hurricane.

"We are closely monitoring what is an extremely dangerous storm," said Scott McClellan, spokesman for President Bush. " ... People should take this hurricane very seriously."

With rough seas already pounding coastal areas, flood-prone Honduras warned that Wilma posed "an imminent threat to life and property" and closed two seaports on its Caribbean coast. Neighboring Nicaragua and the Cayman Islands also were on alert.

With preservation of lives its first priority, Cuba always evacuates before the advent of hurricanes, with most evacuees going to the homes of relatives or friends and the remainder to government run shelters, reports CBS News' Portia Siegelbaum. Civil Defense has began evacuating residents of low-lying coastal areas and those living near dams in the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio.

Wilma was expected to come ashore in southwestern Florida, threatening coastal areas like Punta Gorda that were battered by Charley, the Category 4 storm that was the first of seven hurricanes to strike or pass close to the state since August 2004.

"We likely will have a major hurricane in that southeastern Gulf of Mexico, and we're going to have to deal with it, like it or not," said National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield.

"Kind of scary. I'm not ready for it," sighed Susan, the desk clerk at the Days Inn in Punta Gorda. "Sometimes it makes you wonder if you should just pack up and leave, and stay gone."

Monroe County officials ordered visitors out of the Florida Keys starting at noon Wednesday. Tourists are generally told to leave ahead of others on the lengthy chain of islands connected by one highway.

"People are definitely taking hurricanes much more serious since Katrina and seeing the catastrophic conditions and devastation following that hurricane," said Key West Police Chief Bill Mauldin.

It's lousy timing, says Cindy Thompson of the Margaritaville Café.

"We've got one of the biggest weekends of the year coming up. Fantasy Fest Week starts this Sunday, and it's going to throw really kind of throw a problem into whole thing," Thompson told CBS Radio News. Fantasy Fest is described as one of the biggest parties of the year and "Halloween turned on its ear."
On the state's southwest coast, Collier County officials hadn't ordered anyone to leave the Naples area, but "we are telling those folks who are more comfortable evacuating to go ahead. If they wait there could be road congestion and other problems," said Jaime Sarbagh, a county emergency management spokeswoman.

Early Tuesday, Wilma was only a tropical storm with wind of 70 mph. With wind more than 100 mph faster by the same time Wednesday, it had shown in the most rapid strengthening ever recorded in a hurricane, said Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"The bottom line here is that we should expect to see some fluctuations in intensity, and we should plan on a major hurricane, most likely a Category 4 hurricane, getting into the Gulf of Mexico," said Cobb's boss, Mayfield.

A Category 3 storm has wind of at least 111 mph, a Category 4 has wind of 131 to 155 mph, and a Category 5 is anything above that.

At 2 p.m. EDT, the massive Category 5 storm had maximum sustained winds of 165 mph, down from a peak of 175 mph earlier in the day. It was centered 300 miles southeast of Mexico's Cozumel Island.

However, the storm should eventually make a sharp right turn toward Florida and pick up forward speed in the Gulf of Mexico because it will get caught in the westerlies, the strong wind current that generally blows toward the east, forecasters said.

Wilma was expected to move across Florida rapidly, which means it wouldn't weaken much over land, Cobb said. That means it's possible Atlantic coast cities such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach could be hit by wind nearly as strong as on the west coast, he said.

"If someone were to ask me how the season could get much worse, the answer would be about the only way that would happen is to have a hurricane impact New England," said Mayfield — and it could happen with Wilma: "We have some of the computer projections now that show Wilma after day four turning a little more towards the north, and that could cause an impact to New England."

Many Punta Gorda, Fla., homes and businesses have been rebuilt in a construction boom, but some are still boarded up. More than 6,800 federal trailers and mobile homes remain scattered around the state as temporary housing installed after the six storms, with 934 in Charlotte County alone.

"We've been open about three weeks now. We were down for 14 months. Everything's brand new in here. They had to gut everything out after Hurricane Charley," Days Inn desk clerk Susan, who asked that her last name not be used, told CBS Radio News.

Charley was the first of six hurricanes to strike the state since August 2004, causing more than $20 billion and killing nearly 150 people.

Wilma made history before hitting land. It is the 12th hurricane of the season, the same number reached in 1969, the highest since record-keeping began in 1851. It is also the 21st named storm, tying the record set in 1933.