Pensacola, Fla. With authorities urging her
and more than a million others to flee, Melba Turner was weary
as she prepared for yet another hurricane that was on a path to
smash into the Gulf Coast.
“I’m tired of all this packing up,” the 70-year-old said as
she got ready to clear out of Fort Walton Beach in the Florida
Panhandle. “We look like the Beverly Hillbillies when we get
all packed up and leave. I’d rather stay. We’re getting too old
for all this fussing.” But not everyone heeded the evacuation
orders issued as Hurricane Dennis lumbered toward an expected
direct hit on Sunday in the same area that was devastated by
Hurricane Ivan just 10 months ago. Residents pounded pieces of
plywood into place over windows and some gassed up generators
to ride out the storm churning with 100-mph winds.
On Saturday, Dennis dealt a glancing blow to the Florida Keys,
knocking out power and leaving streets flooded with seaweed.
The hurricane also was blamed for at least 20 deaths in Haiti
and Cuba, where the storm hit as a Category 4 storm with
145-mph winds.
Cuban state radio said hundreds of homes around Cuba’s
southeastern coast had been destroyed or heavily damaged, and
civil defense officials said more than 1.5 million people had
fled their homes. At least 100 people were missing in Haiti
following floods, mudslides and the collapse of a bridge
triggered by Hurricane Dennis, a U.N. official said.
For the U.S. Gulf Coast, it carried a threat of more than a
half-foot of rain plus waves and storm surge that could be more
than a story high when it makes landfall Sunday. On Saturday,
Dennis was a Category 2 hurricane with a top sustained wind of
100 mph, but National Hurricane Center forecasters said it
could strengthen into a Category 3 by landfall.
In Alabama, about 500,000 people were under evacuation orders,
as were 700,000 in Florida and 190,000 in Mississippi. Florida
Gov.Jeb Bush and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley urged residents to evacuate
if they were told to do so.
Traffic doubled on some Mississippi highways as people fled
inland from the coasts of Florida, Alabama and Louisiana.
Alabama officials turned Interstate 65 into a one-way route
north from the coast to Montgomery.
However, confident that the hurricane would make landfall
farther east, officials in New Orleans told nearly half a
million residents they could stay home. A voluntary evacuation
was lifted for suburban Jefferson Parish, including the barrier
island town of Grand Isle.
“We want you to be somewhat comfortable, but not totally
relaxed,” New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Saturday.
At 3 p.m. EDT, Dennis’ eye was about 295 miles south of
Apalachicola in the Panhandle and about 425 miles southeast of
Pascagoula, Miss. It was moving northwest at about 14 mph after
missing Key West by about 125 miles, forecasters said.
Despite the storm’s threat, many people refused to be scared
away.
“I always stay,” nightclub worker Clifton Pugh said in Gulf
Shores, Ala. “I’ve never evacuated. We don’t have any place to
go.
We’ll have a couple of decks of cards and some candles and
flashlights.” “This is home. This is what we go through,”
Danielle Kelson said as she filled up gas cans in Pensacola.
Some neighborhoods in Mobile, Ala., had the appearance of a
typical Saturday as people mowed lawns, jogged and shopped.
“God’s going to take care of me,” Dorothy McGee of Prichard,
Ala., said as she shopped for groceries. And besides, she said,
“I have nowhere to go.” Dennis largely spared the Florida Keys
as the eye passed west of the islands early Saturday, but more
than 211,000 homes and businesses lost power Saturday across
the southern tip of Florida, including the entire city of Key
West. Crews worked to restore power when the winds and rain
died down.
Branches, street signs and other debris littered Key West’s
streets. Waves washed sand and coral onto a main road, and
parts of the tourist drag of Duval Street were under about a
foot and a half of water. No injuries were reported.
Several tornadoes in the Tampa Bay area caused minor damage
such as downed trees, and more twisters were likely in parts of
the Gulf of Mexico coast Sunday.
“We’ve been through a lot of storms and there’ll be more, but
you’ve got problems just about anywhere you want to live:
flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes. At least
we have some warnings on this,” said Marc Cabassa, of Gulf
Breeze.
