TAMPA, Fla. — More than 2 million people in Florida were under orders to pack up and head east to safer ground Tuesday as Hurricane Ian barreled north from Cuba on a path toward Tampa.
Before city officials ordered mandatory evacuations of the Tampa neighborhoods closest to the water, Steve McClure, 54, had stocked up on food, batteries and flashlights and made plans to bunk with his parents in a nearby county.
“I’d rather be safe than sorry, especially with the track of the hurricane consistently changing,” said McClure, a three-year Tampa resident who was living in nearby Clearwater when Hurricane Elena battered Florida’s Gulf Coast in 1985. “First it was coming right at us a day ago. Now it’s turning a bit to the east.”
Packing maximum sustained winds of up to 120 mph, Ian was expected to make landfall south of Tampa, Florida’s third-largest city, sometime Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center warned.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said the time to seek shelter is now.
“You don’t get a mulligan when your personal safety is at risk,” he said at a briefing. “And so we know this thing is going to be hitting the state directly sometime tomorrow evening.”
Even if Tampa avoids a direct hit, water from the Gulf of Mexico will be pushed up Tampa Bay, leading to potentially widespread flooding, state officials warned.
McClure said he’s not sticking around to find out how bad it could get.
“We live basically on the water of Tampa Bay, and we’re in a mandatory evacuation zone, so we’re getting out of here,” he said. “With the storm surge, we figured it was probably safest just to go.”
And he’s under no illusions his home will be spared.
“One hundred percent, especially with the storm surge, because you never know how high it’s going to come up,” he said. “The water could come into our house.”
Alexander Burks, who lives along the Hillsborough River not far from downtown Tampa in a mandatory evacuation zone, was also planning to evacuate Tuesday.
“The storm surge is our biggest worry, but also the high winds and rain,” Burks, 50, said as he boarded up the windows of his home and built a wall of sandbags to protect his property.
But Burks, who moved to Tampa in 2005 and has weathered several hurricanes since then, said he’s not going…
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