NAPLES, Fla._Hurricane Irma passed over Cuba on Saturday and made its long-predicted turn toward the north, aiming its relentless barrage of deadly winds and life-threatening storm surge toward southern Florida.
The storm is already being felt on the eastern part of South Florida as bands of tropical-storm force winds swept through the heavily populated areas of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The Florida Keys were bracing for a catastrophic direct hit around daybreak Sunday, when the eye is expected to pass over the spindly islands.
Miami had been in the cross-hairs of Irma a day earlier, but as the storm drifted to the west, the mood of the city on Saturday went from critical to concerned.
While Miami was still expected to get hurricane-force winds of up to 90 mph and a storm surge of 3 to 6 feet, weather forecasters said the area likely would not see the kind of devastation the region suffered with Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for the area around north Miami Beach at 8 p.m. local time.
Increasingly, though, it appeared that southwestern Florida, the area around Fort Myers and Naples, would bear the brunt of the storm _ with Tampa and St. Petersburg also along the storm's latest projected path.
An additional 700,000 Florida residents were advised to evacuate their homes Saturday, bringing the total recommended evacuations to nearly 7 million _ more than a quarter of the population of Florida _ over several states.
There were hurricane warnings all the way up the east and west coasts of Florida and hurricane watches in Georgia and lower South Carolina. Tropical storm watches were declared along the Florida Panhandle and mid-coastal South Carolina. Seven counties in South Florida are under a tornado watch. More counties will be added as the bands from the storm start to reach those areas.
Broward County and Miami, along with several other counties in central Florida, were imposing nighttime curfews as the storm approached.
All South Florida airports were already closed by early Saturday, and Tampa, Orlando and Sanford airports joined them in shutting down Saturday afternoon and evening.
"If you have been ordered to evacuate anywhere in the state, you need to leave right now," Gov. Rick Scott said at an afternoon news briefing. "Not tonight, not in an hour, but now. You are running out of time to make a decision."
It wasn't easy for everyone.
Near Naples, locals waited in an hours-long line to get inside the Germain Arena in Estero, which had become a 7,500 bed shelter. Many of them had avoided such shelters in previous storms and would not have been there Saturday if their neighborhoods hadn't abruptly been evacuated.
The evacuation zone grew so large by Saturday morning that even those who had made arrangements to stay in hotels were sent to the shelters because the hotels were being evacuated.
Staying at home was out of the question for Elizabeth and John Simler, whose house is built on land about 5 feet above sea level on Sanibel Island, with the stilts it sits on boosting the home an additional 10 feet.
They had prepared, they thought.
"We had a very fine hotel reservation," said Elizabeth Simler, 57. "We did not expect to be in this line (at the shelter)."
The hotel alerted them only hours before that guests were being turned out.
Lou Fusco bailed on his hotel before it could bail on him.
"They said if there is a forced evacuation, you will have to leave," he said. "So I said, 'If that happens, then where the hell am I going to go?'"
In downtown Miami Beach, Jose Toledo, a 27-year-old sound design engineer, said he was moving out of his ninth-floor apartment along the waterfront because it didn't have shutters.
"We're going to stay in my office because it's safer there," he said while emerging for a few last-minute supplies. "But what about the people out on the streets _ I saw some out this morning, like the homeless people, you know? And what are they going to do? And the construction down here isn't good. I'm worried about things flying off the buildings ... and you've got all these construction sites with loose stuff on the ground. It could be dangerous for sure."
Cuba's meteorological agency reported that Irma came ashore overnight in central Camaguey province, home to the country's third-largest city, with winds so strong that they destroyed measurement instruments.
Hurricane-strength winds were later recorded in the northern half of Camaguey. Irma was the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the province in 85 years, according to state media. Damage was reported across the province, the station said: roofs torn off, trees downed and power disconnected.
"No one wants to leave the house, only silence is interrupted by gusts of wind and rain," Yoani Sanchez, who runs a Havana-based digital news service, 14ymedio, tweeted about the situation in Camaguey.
Sanchez posted photos of people crowding the streets of Havana to pray. She reported that supplies were running low.
"Having at least one candle is, at this time, the dream of thousands of Cubanos, but many cannot: the shortage is worsening," she wrote.
Irma's center approached the northern coastal resort town of Caibarien early Saturday with winds of 130 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Video posted online showed city streets and palm trees racked by sheets of rain and powerful winds, which knocked out power in the tourist town and flooded main streets and even inland homes with three to four feet of water.
The Cuban provinces of Holguin and Las Tunas remained under a hurricane watch advisory Saturday, while the capital and its surrounding area could be struck by tropical storm-force winds.
In Holguin, some families have taken shelter in caves to weather the storm.
After crossing over the Keys at daybreak, the storm was expected to march up the coast before exiting Florida on Monday night.
Whichever Florida city is dealt the monster storm's most intense violence, the entire state is poised for a bout of furious weather.
Still, many on Florida's upper east coast felt they were given a reprieve.
Some people in Brevard County, home of the space program, and Volusia County, location of Daytona Beach, believed they dodged a bullet.
"I feel like we'll be safe here," said Ryan Hamby, who just bought a house a few blocks from the beach in Cape Canaveral
"We might get some wind, but I think we're safe from this one," he said.
Peter Cost, who lost a roof to his mobile home last year in Hurricane Matthew, took the opposite approach.
"We've dodged a lot of these storms for a lot of years but sooner or later your number comes up," Cost said. "You've got to be ready."
Tampa and St. Petersburg on Tampa Bay are prone to flooding and would likely suffer major damage with any kind of storm surge or significant rainfall. The Tampa area hasn't had a major hurricane make a direct hit since 1921.
"It should be noted that because of the hurricane's angle of approach to the west coast of Florida, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly where the center might move onshore," said the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is so large that all of southern and central Florida can expect hurricane force winds at some point during the next two days. The National Weather Service warned that no place in the Florida Keys will be safe.
An apocalyptic warning from the weather service Friday night that "this is as real as it gets" appeared to be heeded by even the most hardy of residents to evacuate the lower Keys, and vehicles continued to stream northward. Key West is only 18 feet above sea level.
Scott continued to warn that there was no time to spare.
"The storm is here," Scott said. "Hurricane Irma is now impacting our state. ... This is a deadly storm and the state has never seen anything like it."
State officials have revised their estimate of how big the storm surge could be in coastal areas.
"There is a serious threat of significant storm surge flooding along the entire west coast of Florida and this has increased to 15 feet above ground level," Scott said. "Fifteen feet is devastating and will cover your house.
"In the Tampa area the surge is forecast to be 5 to 8 feet. The typical first story is 7 to 10 feet. This is a life-threatening situation."
So far, almost 48,000 homes in South Florida, mostly in Miami-Dade County, were without power. Florida Power and Light, which services about half the state, lowered its estimate Saturday saying that 3.1 million customers are expected to lose power.
The storm is expected to stay on a slight north-northeast direction and exit the state as a minimal hurricane by Monday morning.
Irma weakened back to a Category 4 hurricane overnight as it brushed the north side of Cuba, and further weakened to Category 3 by Saturday morning. The rugged terrain affected its progress and the winds topped out at 125 mph. But as soon as the storm emerges from Cuba and moves north, the bathwater-like temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico are likely to cause intensification.
The storm was originally expected to make landfall on the east coast of Florida near Miami, but hurricanes are unpredictable.
By the time it became apparent that the Gulf Coast would feel the greatest impact it was too late for an orderly evacuation for those who had not already left earlier in the week.
Naples fire chief Pete DiMaria cautioned residents to head to shelters rather than drive north on the only major escape route, Interstate 75.
Even though the Miami area will miss a direct hit, it may still be subject to crippling storm surge from Irma, whose footprint is as large as Texas.
The streets were essentially empty Saturday morning as officials cautioned everyone to stay indoors.
Irma is one of three hurricanes cycling through the warm September waters. Hurricane Katia struck the eastern coast of Mexico early Saturday as a Category 1 storm. Luis Felipe Puente, head of Mexico's national emergency services agency, said two people were killed by the hurricane, which roared onshore in Veracruz state, pelting the region with intense rains and winds.
Katia quickly lost strength after hitting land and was downgraded to a minimal tropical storm with winds of about 35 mph. The storm could bring 3 to 6 inches of additional rain to a region with a history of flooding and deadly mudslides.
Hurricane Jose continued to churn as a Category 4 storm in the northeast Caribbean. It is expected to affect the islands of St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, but warnings have been lifted for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. The storm will move north into the Atlantic and not be a factor.
