Hurricane Dennis targets storm-scarred US coast

By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Dennis thundered toward the
U.S. Gulf Coast on Sunday with ferocious winds and waves that
threatened potentially massive destruction in an area still
bearing the scars of the last storm season.

After killing 32 people in Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean,
Dennis roared northward in the Gulf of Mexico with 145 mph (230
kph) winds capable of stripping roofs of buildings, and a 10-
to 15-foot (3 meter to 4.6 meter) storm surge that could swamp
coastal towns.

At 9 a.m EDT (1300 GMT), Dennis was a Category 4 hurricane
on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale — stronger than
Hurricane Ivan was when it came ashore last September and
killed 25 people, caused $14 billion in damages and destroyed
or damaged 13 oil drilling platforms in the Gulf.

Authorities in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi urged more
than 1.2 million people in vulnerable low-lying areas to leave
their homes and many heeded the warning, streaming away in long
lines of cars all day Saturday and draining gas stations dry.

“We’ve deployed a lot of resources. We’ve prepositioned
medical, water, food, other kinds of supplies,” Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC’s “This Week” on
Sunday.

“But people have to be braced for a very serious storm.”

In Pensacola, emergency officials told residents who
decided to ride the storm out at home to write their names in
waterproof ink across their chests in case they were killed and
needed to be identified, WFOR television reported.

Flat as glass a day before, Pensacola bay on Sunday morning
turned into a heaving 4- to 6-foot (1.2 meter to 1.8 meter)
sea, washing over the bridges connecting the outlying barrier
island and the Pensacola U.S. Naval Air Station to the
mainland. Dennis at 9 a.m. was located 125 miles to the
south-southeast of Pensacola, the hurricane center said.

Sheets of rain raced across the choppy water at Pensacola,
where blue tarps still cover houses whose roofs were damaged by
Ivan, and forecasters warned that Dennis could bring rainfall
of 15 inches (38 cm) in the area where it makes landfall.

GULF COAST ENERGY

Energy companies pulled hundreds of workers off oil rigs
and shut down some crude and natural gas production in the Gulf
of Mexico, where the United States gets a quarter of its oil
and gas.

Along the Gulf Coast, some people shuttered their houses
with recycled boards bearing the words “Go Away Ivan.”

Ivan was one of an unprecedented four hurricanes to hit
Florida in a six-week period last season. Florida officials
said 40,000 homes statewide had not been fixed yet.

“We’re scared,” said Lee Schoen, 48, a youth services
worker who was boarding up her waterfront home on Mobile Bay in
Alabama. “We’re moving our valuables and things you can’t
replace and going to my mother-in-law’s.”

Before heading north through the Gulf, Dennis brushed past
the popular tourist island of Key West on Florida’s southern
tip. State officials said around 100,000 houses and businesses
were without power Sunday morning.

The hurricane hit Cuba on Friday with 150 mph (240 kph)
winds and crumpled houses, uprooted trees and downed power
lines. But its winds weakened to 90 mph (145 kph) as it crossed
the island of 11 million people before roaring into the Gulf
late on Friday night

Ten people were killed in Cuba and 22 in Haiti.

(Additional reporting by Cathy Donelson in Mobile, Marc
Serota in Pensacola and Jennifer Portman in Tallahassee)