MIAMI BEACH, Fla. _ Genaro Dacosta has a monkey on his back, at least sometimes. It's a small pet marmoset that may force him to ride out Hurricane Irma, now lumbering toward his home on Miami Beach.
Dacosta wants to evacuate, as the government has ordered and as most of his neighbors were doing Thursday. He's been frantically calling authorities in Tallahassee, the state capital, to get permission to bring the monkey to a shelter. So far, no luck. Hotels aren't keen on allowing monkeys, either.
So on Thursday morning, Dacosta found himself, with his family, loading sandbags into the back of his pickup. They are among a band of residents _ call them stubborn, or desperate _ who are going to hunker down at home, in the path of an extremely dangerous storm, and hope for the best.
"There is nothing I could do," he said. "I have what they call a 'wild animal.' I won't leave him."
Jitters aside, Miami Beach was largely calm before the storm, which is expected to hit Florida this weekend. Downtown had not yet been shuttered. Cafes were still open. Businesses were open, if slow. Tourists were getting into cabs and Ubers to leave.
Locals were quietly making preparations _ either to leave or to stay.
Lifeguards used trucks to tow lifeguard stations back into the brush, in hopes they don't float away. Two sandbag stations had lines _ one much longer than the other _ that were calm and orderly. Volunteers and city workers sweated profusely as they shoveled sand into white bags, the sun beating down.
Andrea Ratkovic, a very fit Oklahoman, had been taking one last 6-mile run before decamping with the rest of the tourist masses when she saw sandbags getting filled. She decided to stop and lend a hand.
Ratkovic has seen her share of disasters. She lives 10 miles from where one of the most intense tornadoes ever recorded touched down. Those winds were 316 mph, she said. "There is little you can do to prepare for those," she said. "You just have to run like a bug underground."
At least with a hurricane, you have some advance notice. So Ratkovic, 51, did what she could to help out. "Everybody lives somewhere where stuff happens," she said.
Her trip, with a friend, was supposed to take them to Barbados. They canceled that and diverted to Miami Beach, hoping for the best. Now they are just heading home. "I think we are getting out by the skin of our teeth," Ratkovic said.
In line for sandbags, a few cars behind Dacosta, was Charlie Garcia, who knows how much damage a hurricane can do. He was 10 when his family decided not to evacuate for Hurricane Andrew. Their house was leveled.
"It was total devastation," he said. Nevertheless, Garcia is again staying put.
"This is my home, man," he said. "Where else am I going to go? Everywhere is going to get hit."
He figured he is as safe in the high-rise where he now lives, across the street from the water, as anywhere else in South Florida. His building asked residents to collect sandbags, so that is what he was doing.
Garcia had just gotten back from the Florida Keys, where he has another home in the city of Marathon. He is expecting the worst there after seeing images of what Irma did farther south in the Caribbean.
"If it hits like that in the Keys, it will be horrible," he said.
It had taken Garcia six hours to get home from Marathon, and the same kind of traffic was said to be clogging the roads to the Fort Lauderdale Airport, which Marina Pizzarello of Queens was trying to reach with her mom. They had been vacationing together at the Loews Hotel on Miami Beach.
"It's a horror show," said Pizzarello, 35.
Her route home _ if she gets to the airport _ will take her from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta to Syracuse. From Syracuse, some 250 miles north of New York City, she will have to catch a train home.
Also fleeing the Loews Hotel was Ester Perfetti, with her young children Mateo and Stella. They were on their way back to Rome. She was stunned to see the beaches deserted.
"It is so strange to see it so empty," Perfetti said.
Some locals saw opportunity in that strangely barren beach _ if they could just get the hurricane out of their minds.
Kerleen Collins and a friend, both of whom live downtown, were there reading and napping under a rainbow umbrella.
"We never get to come here at this time," said Collins, 35. "Usually we are at work." Work was canceled to give employees a chance to prepare for the hurricane.
Still, Collins' chill demeanor belied the anxiety all of Miami was feeling.
"People are saying this one is different," she said.
