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KEY LARGO, Fla. — Hotels in this Upper Keys town were shuttered at midday Wednesday as Hurricane Irma barreled in the direction of South Florida as a monstrous Category 5 storm.
Officials in the Keys’ Monroe County ordered a mandatory evacuation of all tourists in the 125-mile chain of islands stretching between Key West and Key Largo at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning.
By 11 a.m., the Key Largo Bay Marriott Beach Resort, one of the area’s largest hotels, had closed, leaving a nearly empty parking lot as evidence.
“Closed due to evacuation,” read the hotel’s neon sign board.
Other hotels, including the local Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn and the nearby Marina Del Mar Resort, had also closed, with some having completed the process of shuttering each hotel room.
Other sectors of the Upper Keys tourism infrastructure were also down for the storm.
Across the canal from Marina Del Mar on Wednesday afternoon, the Rainbow Reef Reef Dive Center, one of approximately 20 dive shops in this town that calls itself the Diving Capital of the World, had already boarded up its windows for the storm and workers were in the early stages of figuring out how to tie Rainbow Reef’s two dive boats off in the middle of the canal, where they could potentially weather a storm surge without crashing ashore or into the canal’s edge.
Residents, too, were preparing for Irma’s wrath ahead of a mandatory evacuation order set to take effect at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Gas stations were mainly out of fuel and closed, though at least one in central Key Largo remained open and busy.
Across the canal from Rainbow Reef, Suzi Simpson was beginning her own prep to position her family’s live-aboard sailboat into the middle of the canal.
Simpson said she is scared for what the next few days will bring.
“I’ve got two kids, a dog, a cat, my husband and myself,” she said. “Everything we own is right here.”
Simpson added that she hopes her family will be able to stay at the Courtyard by Marriott next to Rainbow Reef, which is closed to regular visitors.
“If not, we’ll just get in the car and start driving,” she said.
Sоurсе: travelweekly.com
