Hurricane Ivan Blasts Alabama, Kills 12
GULF SHORES, Ala. – Hurricane Ivan slammed ashore early Thursday with winds of 130 mph, packing deadly tornadoes and a powerful punch of waves and rain that threatened to swamp communities from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. At least 12 deaths were blamed on the storm.
Many of the millions of Gulf Coast residents who spent a frightening night in shelters and boarded-up homes were emerging Thursday morning to find that Ivan was not the catastrophe they had feared.
“Ivan was nowhere near as bad as Frederic – not even close,” Mobile Police Chief Sam Cochran said, referring to the 1979 storm that devastated the Alabama coast. “I think we were really spared and blessed.”
Still, forecasters said the worst could be yet to come, as up to 15 inches of rain were expected as the storm moved inland.
Downtown Mobile was deserted early Thursday. The historic oak-tree-lined Government Street was blocked with downed tree limbs, metal signs, roofing material and other storm debris.
“We were wondering at first if we made the right choice or not,” said Marc Oliver, 38, who rode out the storm with his family in Mobile. “We had some trees down in our yard and roofing damage, other than that, we came out pretty good.”
Oliver boarded up his windows of his brick home and spent the night with his wife, 7-year-old son and brother-in-law, Robert Driver, moving from room to room as the winds shifted.
“The good lord was looking out for us,” Driver said.
The storm weakened as it moved inland, but remained a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 80 mph more than four hours after landfall.
Ivan knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people, toppled trees, ripped off roofs and sent street signs hurtling through the night. In the beach resort town of Gulf Shores, where the storm’s eye blew ashore, the sky had a bright green glow as electrical transformers blew.
“We have never seen a hurricane of this size come into Alabama,” said Gov. Bob Riley, who earlier asked President Bush to declare much of the state a disaster area, a request that was granted.
Two people were killed and more than 200 homes were damaged when at least five tornadoes roared through Florida’s Bay County. Five people were killed when another tornado struck homes in Blountstown, Fla., and an 8-year-old girl died after being crushed by a tree that fell onto her mobile home in Milton, Fla. Her parents were unharmed.
“You want to see the natural hand of God firsthand but you don’t realize how strong it is,” said Kevin Harless, 32, who was sightseeing in Panama City Beach, Fla., around the time of the tornadoes.
Four ailing evacuees – a terminally ill cancer patient, two nursing home patients and a homebound patient – reportedly died after being taken from their storm-threatened south Louisiana homes to safer parts of the state.
Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, warned that the misery would spread as Ivan moves across the Southeast in the hours and days ahead. “I hate to think about what’s going to happen inland,” he said.
At 8 a.m. EDT, Ivan was centered about 90 miles west-southwest of Montgomery, Ala., and was moving north at 17 mph. Forecasters projected a path that could take Ivan on a northeastern march across most of the South and parts of the Midwest.
A hurricane warning for New Orleans was lifted early Thursday, but one remained in effect from the mouth of the Pearl River in eastern Louisiana to Apalachicola, Fla. As of 8 a.m., hurricane-force winds extended out 50 miles from the storm, which earlier killed at least 68 people across the Caribbean.
National Hurricane Center forecasters said land east of where Ivan’s eye passed was experiencing storm surge of 10 to 16 feet, topped by large and dangerous battering waves.
“We’ve had calls from folks saying, ‘The water is rising, can you come get me?’ Unfortunately we can’t send anybody out. The storm is at its worst point now,” Sonya Smith, a spokeswoman for Florida’s Escambia County emergency management agency, said early Thursday.
The storm’s northward track spared New Orleans a direct hit. Parts of the city – particularly vulnerable because much of it is below sea level – saw only sporadic, light rain overnight, though wind gusts reached tropical storm strength.
City officials had scrambled to get people out of harm’s way, putting some 1,100 people in the cavernous Louisiana Superdome and urging others to move to higher floors in tall buildings.
At least 260,000 homes and businesses were without power in Alabama, 36,500 in Louisiana, 70,000 in Mississippi. More than 300,000 customers were without power in the four westernmost Florida Panhandle counties. Florida was still trying to restore power to about 160,000 hit by Hurricanes Charley and Frances in recent weeks.
Ivan’s waves – some up to 25 feet – destroyed homes along the Florida coast Wednesday. A buoy about 300 miles south of Panama City registered one wave of 50 feet high.
In Fort Walton Beach, Fla., a nursing home lost its generator power and reported that six patients desperately needed oxygen. An emergency medical crew drove through the 90 mph wind to deliver portable oxygen tanks.
Mayors of the Alabama communities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach refused to allow anyone back until further notice, fearful that returning residents weren’t safe among downed power lines and weakened buildings, said county EMA spokeswoman Colette Boehm.
Gulf Shores Mayor David Bodenhamer said streets were flooded and trees and power lines were down everywhere. His home and others along the beachfront road were OK, “But the beach is going to be a mess, a big mess,” he said.
Of the roughly 2 million who fled the path of the storm, often in bumper-to-bumper caravans on highways turned into one-way evacuation routes, 1.2 million were from greater New Orleans.
Forecasters had said hurricane-force winds could blast the coast for nearly 20 hours.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for as far away as North Carolina, which suffered heavy flooding last week from the remnants of Hurricane Frances.
More trouble lingered out in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Jeanne became a hurricane Thursday in the Caribbean as moved westward across the north coast of Puerto Rico with 80 mph winds. It could be near Florida’s east coast as early as the weekend.
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Editor’s Note: Associated Press reporters Mary Foster in New Orleans; David Royse in Apalachicola, Fla.; Shelia Hardwell Byrd in Gulfport, Miss.; Allen G. Breed in New Orleans; Pauline Arrillaga in Mobile, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Pascagoula, Miss.; and Bill Kaczor in Pensacola, Fla., contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov