Matthew gets stronger as it hits Bahamas, nears Florida

MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. --  Hurricane Matthew marched toward Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas and nearly 2 million people along the coast were urged to evacuate their homes Wednesday, a mass exodus ahead of a major storm packing power the U.S. hasn’t seen in more than a decade.

Forecasters said Hurricane Matthew was pounding portions of the Central Bahamas early Thursday and was expected to strengthen as it approached Florida.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Matthew remained a powerful Category 3 storm, with top sustained winds of 125 mph as of 5 a.m. EDT Thursday, up from 115 mph hours earlier. The hurricane center added that Matthew is expected to intensify over the next day or so and is forecast to again be a dangerous Category 4 hurricane as it nears Florida’s Atlantic coast. 

On the forecast track, the eye should pass near Grand Bahama Island late Thursday and move very close to the Florida’s east coast Thursday night through Friday night, forecasters said.

Matthew was briefly a very dangerous Category 5 storm on its march across the Caribbean. 

At least 16 deaths in the Caribbean have been blamed on the storm. The death toll in Haiti alone was raised to 10 by the country’s civil protection agency Wednesday evening, but the number was expected to tick upward as more hard-hit rural areas are reached Thursday and people tell their stories.

Haiti’s government estimates that at least 350,000 people need some kind of assistance. U.S. military personnel in helicopters are expected to start arriving to help deliver food and water to hard-hit areas. 

Early Thursday, Matthew was centered about 255 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, Florida, moving northwest at 12 mph.

Hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 40 miles from the center, meaning Matthew could wreak havoc along the East Coast even if it doesn’t actually come ashore. 

Along the East Coast, people boarded up beach homes, some schools closed and residents began clearing out.

The office of Florida’s government said 1.5 million people were being encouraged to move to safer spots.

The storm was forecast to scrape much of the Florida coast and any slight deviation could mean landfall or it heading farther out to sea. Either way, it was going to be close enough to cause much damage along the lower part of the East Coast, and many people weren’t taking any chances.

In Melbourne Beach, near the Kennedy Space Center, Carlos and April Medina moved their paddle board and kayak inside the garage and took pictures off the walls of their home about 500 feet from the coast. They moved the pool furniture inside, turned off the water, disconnected all electrical appliances and emptied their refrigerator.

They then hopped in a truck filled with legal documents, jewelry and a decorative carved shell that had once belonged to April Medina’s great-grandfather and headed west to Orlando, where they planned to ride out the storm with their daughter’s family.

“The way we see it, if it maintains its current path, we get tropical storm-strength winds. If it makes a little shift to the left, it could be a Category 2 or 3 and I don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Carlos Medina said. “We are just being a little safe, a little bit more cautious.”

About 20 miles away in the town of Cape Canaveral, John Long said Hurricane Matthew is just hype as his neighbors in his RV park packed up and evacuated inland. Even though his 32-foot RV is just feet from the Banana River and a half mile from the beach, he had no plans to leave.

Long, who owns a bike shop and has lived along the Space Coast for 30 years, said he has a generator and enough food and water for himself and his cats to last a week.

“There’s always tremendous buildup and then it’s no stronger than an afternoon thunderstorm,” he said. “I’m not anticipating that much damage.”  

In Fort Lauderdale, about 200 miles south, six employees at a seven-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion packed up for an evacuation fearing any storm surge could flood the property. The homeowners planned to move to another home they own in Palm Beach that’s further from the water. Two Lamborghinis and a Ferrari had been placed inside the garage, but employee Mae White wasn’t sure what they would do with a Rolls Royce, Mustang and other cars still parked in the driveway.

“This storm surge. It’s scary,” White said. “You’re on the water, you’ve got to go.”

CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez found so many people fueling up at a service station in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Tuesday night, a man was directing traffic to the pumps.

“There were quite a few lines earlier so we decided to come out a little later,” said Judy Karagiannes, fueling up. “We figured you know, maybe later would be better.”

“What about this storm in particular made you decide, ‘Let’s get prepared?’” Bojorquez asked.

The strength of the winds and how big it is,” Karagiannes said. 

“Been through Wilma and Katrina and pretty much seen what devastation they can cause -- so not taking any chances,” said another resident. 

Inside, store shelves that stock water quickly ran bare, Bojorquez reported.

The Dania Beach Grill already closed.  Kathleen Lecourt is the manager, and said there are things about this storm particularly that made her decide to close now.

“It was the jogging east and west that keeps jogging east and west and just seems like it doesn’t know which direction it’s going,” she said. “So we decided to keep everyone safe, we would close.” 

The last Category 3 storm or higher to hit the United States was Wilma in October 2005. It made landfall with 120 mph (190 kph) winds in southwest Florida, killing five people as it pushed through the Everglades and into the Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach area. It caused an estimated $21 billion in damage and left thousands of residents without power for more than a week. It concluded a two-year span when a record eight hurricanes hit the state.

Florida can expect as much as 10 inches of rain in some isolated areas.

In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley reversed the lanes of Interstate 26 so that all lanes of traffic were headed west and out of Charleston. It was the first time the lanes had been reversed. Plans to reverse the lanes were put in place after hours-long traffic jams during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

The governor planned to call for more evacuations on Thursday, which would bring the total to about 500,000 people in the state. Florida urged or ordered about 1.5 million to leave the coast, said Jackie Schutz, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott. Georgia had around 50,000 people told to go.

At Folly Beach, South Carolina, southwest of Charleston, Gaby Trompeter loaded her car at her beachfront home preparing to evacuate to Augusta, Georgia.

Trompeter, a 50-year-old goldsmith who designs and makes jewelry, remembers Hurricane Hugo when she stayed in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989.

A year ago when what has been described as a 1,000-year flood inundated South Carolina there was so much water on the road near her house she couldn’t get out for three days.

“If it brings a lot of rain, more than the storm last year, why would I want to stay?” she said.

President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters Wednesday to be briefed on preparations. FEMA has deployed personnel to emergency operation centers in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. It’s also positioning commodities and other supplies at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and in Albany, Georgia.

On the Georgia coast, 92-year-old Lou Arcangeli saw two of his adult children come to his home on Tybee Island to help prepare and evacuate if necessary.

“It’s serious,” said Arcangeli, who has lived in the Savannah area since 1979, when Hurricane David became the last hurricane to make landfall on Georgia’s 100-mile coast. “I’m going to keep an eye on it and not wait until the last minute. As far as I’m concerned, what’s going to happen is going to happen.”

Farmers in Matthew’s path scrambled to protect their crops. In South Carolina, Jeremy Cannon was harvesting his soybeans a week early after waiting too long before last year’s record rainstorm. He watched his soybeans and cotton crops slowly drown as 20 inches of rain fell, costing him $800,000.

“I don’t want to lose a single soybean this year if I don’t have to,” Cannon said. “The Lord says pray without ceasing. And that’s what I’ve been doing - in the fields, near the barn - just praying all the time. I don’t want to find out what I’ll have to do if I get wiped out for another year.”

In:
• Hurricane Matthew
• Florida