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* Richard Luscombe in Miami
* The Guardian,
* Monday August 18 2008 Tourists were ordered to evacuate the Florida Keys yesterday in
preparation for a tropical storm that has claimed at least four lives in
the Caribbean.
Authorities placed the low-lying island chain and coastal areas of
south-west Florida on a hurricane watch in anticipation of winds over
75mph and a tidal surge up to two metres above normal later today. Charlie Crist, Florida's governor, called a state of emergency as the
evacuations began, saying: "Tropical storm Fay threatens the state with
a major disaster." Visitors to resorts on Cuba's east coast were also moved inland as the
storm passed over the country yesterday, dropping up to 30cm of rain and
prompting a warning from the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami
of "life-threatening flash floods and mudslides". Erratic path and rapid cycles of strengthening and weakening winds has
made Fay difficult to predict. But meteorologists insisted it had the
potential to escalate rapidly as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf
of Mexico towards Florida. "Fay is expected to reach hurricane strength in the south-eastern Gulf,"
said an NHC forecaster, James Franklin. The Florida Keys, which have not been in the direct path of a hurricane
since 1998, are particularly vulnerable to flooding because they lie at
sea level. Business owners in Key West, the most westerly island, began
laying sandbags and boarding up windows yesterday morning as hurricane
shelters opened for residents and visitors began the drive to the
mainland over a 150-mile chain of bridges. Shell Oil said it was evacuating workers from rigs in the Gulf of Mexico
as a precaution. The death toll from tropical storm Fay rose to four on Saturday when a
woman and two children, aged 13 and five, drowned in the Dominican
Republic when they tried to cross a swollen river in a car, emergency
services said. Another man drowned in Haiti, where local radio reported that flooding
and high winds had destroyed rice fields and banana crops.
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