Matthew strengthened back into a Category 4 hurricane Thursday, the National Hurricane Center announced, as emergency officials urged some 2 million people from Florida to South Carolina to pack up and get out.
"Do not go on the beach. This will kill you," Florida Gov. Rick Scott warned Thursday. "Unfortunately, this is going to kill people."
The storm's top wind speed surged to 140 mph around midday Thursday, officials said. Hurricane Matthew was moving northwest near 14 mph between Andros Island and Nassau in the Bahamas. Forecasting models predicted the storm could ride up the coast all the way to South Carolina, possibly making landfall over Florida Thursday night.
The Fort Lauderdale airport shut down on Thursday morning, and further north the Orlando airport expected to do the same by nighttime. By midday, flight-tracking service FlightAware.com reported that nearly 1,500 flights within the U.S. had been scrapped, with the largest numbers at Fort Lauderdale and Miami. American Airlines, which has a major hub in Miami, was the hardest-hit carrier, followed by Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways.
"When a hurricane is forecast to take a track roughly parallel to a coastline, as Matthew is forecast to do from Florida through South Carolina, it becomes very difficult to specify impacts at any one location," National Hurricane Center forecaster Lixion Avila said.
The number of people killed in Haiti rose to 136, officials told Reuters on Thursday, saying the storm killed at least four people elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal ordered a mandatory evacuation of his state's entire coast, covering more than a half-million people. The Georgia coast hasn't seen a hurricane evacuation since 1999, when it narrowly escaped Hurricane Floyd.
Scott said Florida could see its biggest evacuation ever. "This thing is getting close to our coast, you better be ready before. If it turns at the last minute, you're not going to have time to get ready. You're not going to be able to get your food and water. You're not going to be able to evacuate. You're going to put you and your family's life at risk."
Florida can expect as much as 10 inches of rain in some isolated areas. The governor has activated another 1,000 National Guard members, bringing the total to 2,500. He says they'll be available to help with evacuations and getting people to shelters.
The storm was forecast to scrape much of the Florida coast and any slight deviation could mean landfall or heading farther out to sea. Either way, it was going to be close enough to wreak havoc along the southeastern U.S. and many people weren’t taking any changes.
In Melbourne Beach, near the Kennedy Space Center, Carlos and April Medina moved their paddle board and kayak inside the garage and took pictures off the walls of their home about 500 feet from the coast. They moved the pool furniture inside, turned off the water, disconnected all electrical appliances and emptied their refrigerator.
They then hopped in a truck filled with legal documents, jewelry and a decorative carved shell that had once belonged to April Medina's great-grandfather and headed west to Orlando, where they planned to ride out the storm with their daughter's family.
"The way we see it, if it maintains its current path, we get tropical storm-strength winds. If it makes a little shift to the left, it could be a Category 2 or 3 and I don't want to be anywhere near it," Carlos Medina said. "We are just being a little safe, a little bit more cautious."
About 20 miles away in the town of Cape Canaveral, John Long said Hurricane Matthew is just hype as his neighbors in his RV park packed up and evacuated inland. Even though his 32-foot RV is just feet from the Banana River and a half mile from the beach, he had no plans to leave.
Long, who owns a bike shop and has lived along the Space Coast for 30 years, said he has a generator and enough food and water for himself and his cats to last a week.
"There's always tremendous buildup and then it's no stronger than an afternoon thunderstorm," he said. "I'm not anticipating that much damage."
In Fort Lauderdale, about 200 miles south, six employees at a seven-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion packed up for an evacuation fearing any storm surge could flood the property. The homeowners planned to move to another home they own in Palm Beach that's further from the water. Two Lamborghinis and a Ferrari had been placed inside the garage, but employee Mae White wasn't sure what they would do with a Rolls Royce, Mustang and other cars still parked in the driveway.
"This storm surge. It's scary," White said. "You're on the water, you've got to go."
Meanwhile, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley reversed lanes of Interstate 26 so that all lanes of traffic were headed west and out of Charleston. It was the first time the lanes had been reversed. Plans to reverse the lanes were put in place after hours-long traffic jams during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Scott also lifted tolls on major roads. The Florida Turnpike, Alligator Alley and roads apart of the Central Florida Expressway Authority and the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority had toll services suspended, according to Fox 35 Orlando.
At Folly Beach, S.C., southwest of Charleston, Gaby Trompeter loaded her car at her beachfront home preparing to evacuate to Augusta, Georgia.
Trompeter, a 50-year-old goldsmith who designs and makes jewelry, remembers Hurricane Hugo when she stayed in Savannah, Georgia, in 1989.
A year ago when what has been described as a 1,000-year flood inundated South Carolina there was so much water on the road near her house she couldn't get out for three days.
"If it brings a lot of rain, more than the storm last year, why would I want to stay?" she said.
On the Georgia coast, 92-year-old Lou Arcangeli saw two of his adult children come to his home on Tybee Island to help prepare and evacuate if necessary.
"It's serious," said Arcangeli, who has lived in the Savannah area since 1979, when Hurricane David became the last hurricane to make landfall on Georgia's 100-mile coast. "I'm going to keep an eye on it and not wait until the last minute. As far as I'm concerned, what's going to happen is going to happen."
Farmers in Matthew's path scrambled to protect their crops. In South Carolina, Jeremy Cannon was harvesting his soybeans a week early after waiting too long before last year's record rainstorm. He watched his soybeans and cotton crops slowly drown as 20 inches of rain fell, costing him $800,000.
"I don't want to lose a single soybean this year if I don't have to," Cannon said. "The Lord says pray without ceasing. And that's what I've been doing — in the fields, near the barn — just praying all the time. I don't want to find out what I'll have to do if I get wiped out for another year."
In the coastal Georgia city of Brunswick, a judge suspended the murder trial for Ross Harris, the man accused of leaving his son to die in a hot car, until Monday because of the impending storm.