MIAMI (AP) An increasingly alarming Hurricane Dorian menaced a corridor of some 10 million people and put Walt Disney World and President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in the crosshairs as it steamed toward Florida on Friday with the potential to become the most powerful storm to hit the states east coast in nearly 30 years.
Getting scarier with seemingly every update from forecasters, Dorian strengthened into an extremely dangerous Category 3 in the afternoon and was expected to become a potentially catastrophic Category 4 with winds of almost 140 mph before blowing ashore late Monday or early Tuesday.
The National Hurricane Centers projected track showed Dorian hitting around Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is situated, then moving inland over the Orlando area. But because of the difficulty of predicting a storms course this far out, forecasters cautioned that practically all of Florida, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, could be in harms way.
They warned, too, that Dorian was moving more slowly, which could subject the state to a prolonged and destructive pummeling from wind, storm surge and heavy rain.
This is big and is growing and it still has some time to get worse, Julio Vasquez said at a Miami fast-food joint next to a gas station that had run out of fuel. No one knows what can really happen. This is serious.
Trump declared a state of emergency in Florida and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster-relief efforts.
As Dorian closed in, it played havoc with peoples Labor Day weekend plans. Major airlines began allowing travelers to change their reservations without a fee. The big cruise lines began rerouting their ships. Disney World and the other resorts in Orlando found themselves in the storms projected path.
Jessica Armesto and her 1-year-old daughter, Mila, had planned to have breakfast with Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy at Disney World. Instead, Armesto decided to take shelter at her mothers hurricane-resistant house in Miami with its kitchen full of nonperishable foods.
It felt like it was better to be safe than sorry, so we canceled our plans, she said.
Still, with Dorian days away and its track uncertain, Disney and other major resorts held off announcing any closings, and Florida authorities ordered no immediate mass evacuations.
Sometimes if you evacuate too soon, you may evacuate into the path of the storm if it changes, Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
Homeowners and businesses rushed to cover their windows with plywood. Supermarkets ran out of bottled water, and long lines formed at gas stations, with fuel shortages reported in places. The governor said the Florida Highway Patrol would begin escorting fuel trucks to help them get past the lines of waiting motorists and replenish gas stations.
