It’s supposed to be a ghost town – but there are plenty of mortals to be found in Miami Beach if you look.
And those who have chosen to remain as Category 4 Hurricane Irma descends on the oceanfront playground agree, they are not The Walking Dead.
They believe they are safer where they are than if they had evacuated inland or moved north to avoid the 155mph fury of the largest storm ever to form in the open Atlantic Ocean.
And despite seeing pictures of the devastation Irma has wrought in Caribbean islands such as Barbuda, St Martin and Tortola, they have faith in their sturdy homes just yards from the Atlantic coast.
Many who have chosen to stay in Miami Beach despite evacuation warnings as Hurricane Irma looms believe there are safer staying where they are (Pictured, Marie Fonseca, left, and her friend, Flovio Sobe, say they are going to tough out the storm)
Only one restaurant, at the Boulevard Hotel, on famed Ocean Drive, remained open. Manager Ram Luis (pictured) said there were nine staffers on duty but there would normally be 20
Nikki Aliosmanova (left) and her boyfriend, Alex Rizov (right), from the UK plan to enjoy South Beach, which has been made a ghost town, as their very own private beach
‘Where am I going to go?’ asked real estate consultant Marie Fonseca as she headed back to her apartment for cigarettes she had forgotten to take with her on a stroll around town with her friend Flavio Sobe.
‘I had one person I know in hysterics saying: “You have to leave now, come and stay with me!” But she’s in Tampa and that looks like it could get hit worse. Good luck with that one.’
Her friend, Sobe, told DailyMail.com he will ride Irma out with as many people as possible in his apartment along South Beach’s Collins Avenue.
‘I’ve put a note on my Facebook telling people with nowhere else to go to come to my place. They should bring happiness and pets,’ he said.
And partying is the way to go, added Sobe.
‘You know what the first things to run out were when news of this hurricane started? – lube, alcohol and condoms. That’s the Miami way of dealing with it.’
Ironically, Sobe shouldn’t be in South Beach at all this weekend. He is due to start a new job in New York next week and should have already left. But four flights out were canceled meaning his last few nights in Florida will be spent with Irma.
Danielle Sharon also found her plans went awry. She and husband Theodore were due to be on a cruise down the Danube, but they too found their flight to Europe canceled.
‘Once that happened I never even thought of leaving town,’ Sharon, 67, said as she walked her 15-year-old French Poodle Boubou outside her apartment block.
‘I’m not scared. I rode out Hurricane Andrew here and I can ride out Irma too,’ she said.
Lorna Jaquiss (pictured) said she believed her apartment block was strong enough to withstand Hurricane Irma. As a general contractor for restaurants she will be one of the first to be called on to help rebuild Miami Beach if Irma’s damage is as bad as many believe it could be
Ramon Onate, 59, who is homeless (pictured), says he is hoping to find shelter in town
The strip of fine sand that gives South Beach its name would normally be packed towel-to-towel with locals and floods of tourists at this time of year, but instead the town was deserted
Sharon lives on the 11th floor and her apartment faces inland so she believes she will be safe from both storm surge and the worst of the winds.
‘If it gets really bad I’ll go in to the hallways, she said. ‘This is my home and it’s safer than any other place.’
She said she has plenty of supplies – although bottled water isn’t one of them. ‘I’ve got plenty of empty bottles and I’ll fill them with water, but there’s no way I’ll buy bottled water at the price they sell it.’
Others had less chance to get out of town. Homeless Ramon Onate, 59, hopes to find shelter from the storm in town.
‘I’ll be OK,’ Onate said in broken English as he rattled off his social security number and date of birth to DailyMail.com, before realizing we were not law enforcement.
‘I wouldn’t want to leave anyway. This is where I live.’
By early Friday afternoon Miami Beach was pretty well closed as officials placed a mandatory evacuation order on the barrier island town that is home to 92,000 residents and normally teems with tens of thousands more visitors.
A 7-Eleven on Washington Avenue had the word ‘Open’ scrawled several times in red spray paint on the plywood that is boarding it up, but it was closed
Hurricane Irma is set to make landfall in the US around Sunday morning with wind gusts potentially reaching near 155mph (Pictured, few people stroll on Collins Avenue)
By early Friday afternoon Miami Beach was pretty well closed as officials placed a mandatory evacuation order on the barrier island town that is home to 92,000 residents
A 7-Eleven on Washington Avenue had the word ‘Open’ scrawled several times in red spray paint on the plywood that is boarding it up. But it wasn’t. Someone had written the word ‘Not’ in white after failing to get in.
And tantalizingly, dozens of in-demand bottles of water were left on full view in the window of a nearby Walgreen’s that will not open its doors until after the storm has passed.
On famed Ocean Drive, only one restaurant, in the Boulevard Hotel, remained open on Friday. It planned to close by 7pm, morning manager Ram Luis told DailyMail.com.
‘We only have nine members of staff on duty,’ he said. ‘We would normally have about 20, but we have told anyone who doesn’t have somewhere safe to spend the night to get out.’
The hotel itself was shuttered. ‘We could have filled it three times over,’ said Luis, 32. ‘But we’re really open to the ocean so we couldn’t guarantee it would be safe.’
Luis himself planned to head to his home in Hialeah once his work at the restaurant is over and hunker down for the duration of the storm. ‘I’m in Zone B,’ he said of the areas of evacuation priority that city officials in Miami have drawn up.
‘I’m hoping there will be no flooding there. There shouldn’t be.’
A bicyclist, one of the few left, video records while cycling down Ocean Drive in Miami
A boarded up store on Collins Avenue reads: ‘Never Give Up Miami’ with a heart on plywood
Sand bags and spray foam that hardens to stop water entering through the door lays at the entrance of a store on Washington Avenue
Lorna Jaquiss, who was eating lunch with her 11-year-old niece in the restaurant, is another who is determined to stay in town. ‘My apartment block was built in 1950 so it’s withstood a lot and I believe it’s strong enough,’ she said.
‘I could have left but I have decided to stay,’ she said. ‘If it gets really bad we go into the hallways away from the windows.
‘When Andrew hit I moved inland to a house. We lost the roof there but the apartment was OK.
‘We have everything we need to survive for several days so I am not worried in the slightest.’
Jaquiss also has work to consider. As a general contractor for restaurants she will be one of the first to be called on to help rebuild Miami Beach if Irma’s damage is as bad as many believe it could be.
‘It is not work I want, but it could be work I have to do, so I want to be here so I can do it,’ she said.
Danielle Sharon and her dog Boubou walk on Collins Avenue. She says she’s staying put: ‘I’m not scared. I rode out Hurricane Andrew here and I can ride out Irma too’
‘I can guarantee you that I don’t know anybody in Florida that’s ever experienced what’s about to hit South Florida,’ said William Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, on Friday (Pictured, a cyclists rides on Collins Avenue)
The strip of fine sand that gives South Beach its name would normally be packed towel-to-towel with locals and floods of European tourists at this time of year.
Instead, one couple from England had an entire stretch all to themselves.
‘We’ve watched as fewer and fewer people have been here every day,’ said Nikki Aliosma Nova, a hotel manager from Walthamstow, East London.
‘Now there is just the two of us.’
Nikki and her boyfriend, Alex Risov, who runs the New Moon pub in London’s Leadenhall Market, are on a two-week vacation in Miami. ‘The hotel assures us we will be safe, so we are staying put,’ said Nikki.
The pair planned the trip to celebrate both their birthdays. Alex turned 32 on Friday while Nikki celebrates her 34th on Sunday, the day the hurricane is due to hit.
As Alex joked: ‘It won’t be fireworks for her birthday this year, it’ll be something much more spectacular.’