By Rachel La Corte
The Associated Press

MIAMI - Residents along Florida's Atlantic coast learned an important lesson from Hurricane Charley three weeks ago: Give a hurricane a wide berth.

As of Thursday, the National Hurricane Center's five-day forecast said Hurricane Frances could come ashore near Vero Beach early Saturday. At the same time, forecasters warned it could hit anywhere along a 370-mile swath of the Atlantic Coast.

Florida residents heeded that warning: Up and down the coast, gas stations ran out of fuel, and lumber stores sold out of generators and plywood for boarding up homes.

Bo Eavers stood in a line of about 300 people at a Home Depot in Port St. Lucie, not far from the target zone, in part because he was struck by the news video of the destruction wrought by Charley, which slammed the state's southwest coast Aug. 13.

"Charley was such a sleeper," Eavers said. "People underestimated how dangerous it was. No one's screwing around this time."

Charley took a sudden change in track and hit southwest Florida without much warning to residents there. Charley inflicted an estimated $7.4 billion in insured damage and left 27 people dead when it swept across the peninsula Aug. 13.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, said that with Frances closing in, people should focus on the "cone of uncertainty" that covers the entire state of Florida.

In the Bahamas, the ferocious winds of Frances flung debris and kicked up 15-foot waves in the sparsely populated southeastern area, while people in the main population centers of Nassau and Freeport rushed to prepare for the worst storm in at least five years.