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Up to 25,000 tourists flee Tropical Storm Fay

Florida – Some Key West stores were shuttered Monday while others stubbornly remained open as rain and wind gusts from Tropical Storm Fay began to lash at south Florida after the storm claimed up to 35 lives in the Caribbean.

Roughly 25,000 tourists had evacuated, Monroe County Mayor Mario Di Gennaro said, but some bars and restaurants were doing business, even if crowds were considerably thinner than typical for this time of year. At the Stuffed Pig restaurant in Marathon, about a dozen locals had breakfast Monday morning, not worried but prepared for the storm.

“We always prepare, we don’t take it lightly,” owner Michael Cinque said. “We might roll down the shutters. We got built-in generators.”

Willie Dykes, 58, and friend Essy Pastrana, 48, live on a sailboat in Key West, and said they weren’t going anywhere. The pair was filling up gas cans Monday morning and buying supplies like food, water and whiskey.

“We’re gonna ride it out,” Dykes said, his fluffy white beard blowing sideways in the wind. “We’re not worried about it. We’ve seen this movie before.”

Further north in the Keys town of Marathon, Home Depot assistant manager Denis Lee said it seemed like a normal Monday despite the approaching storm.

“Everybody seems to be acting like this is a non-event,” Lee said.

Fay, the sixth named storm of the 2008 Atlantic season, left at least five people dead in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In Haiti, an overloaded bus overturned while trying to drive across a river surging with rain, and at least 30 people were missing and feared dead.

Forecasters said Fay is expected to near hurricane strength, which starts at windspeeds of 74 mph, when it reaches the Keys later Monday. Aside from wind damage, most of the islands sit at sea level and could face some limited flooding from Fay’s storm surge.

The exact track is not clear but the storm is expected to hit the Keys first and then sweep up the western coast of Florida, forecasters said.

Anywhere from 4 to 10 inches of rain are possible, so flooding is a threat even far from where the center comes ashore, said Stacy Stewart, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center.

“We don’t want people to focus on the exact track. This is a broad, really diffuse storm. All the Florida Keys and all the Florida peninsula are going to feel the effects of this storm, no matter where the center makes landfall,” he said. “We don’t want people to downplay this.”

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