APALACHICOLA, Fla. — Fay just won’t quit.
The storm that set a record with four landfalls in Florida chugged west across the Gulf Coast on Saturday. The storm was downgraded to a tropical depression late Saturday, but cities from Pensacola to New Orleans still prepared for several inches of rain.
Proving that a slow-moving tropical storm can be as deadly and damaging as a hurricane, Fay killed at least 11 people in Florida and one in Georgia, emergency officials said.
Thousands of homes and businesses were inundated with floodwaters last week as Fay worked its way north from its first landfall in the Florida Keys and zigzagged across the peninsula.
Fay’s center made its fourth landfall about 1 a.m. EDT Saturday, about 15 miles north-northeast of Apalachicola, according to the National Hurricane Center. Bands of heavy rain and high winds making up the eastern half of the storm pelted inland areas.
Rains and strong wind gusts blitzed Tallahassee, the state capital, for more than 24 hours, knocking down trees and power lines and cutting electricity to more than 12,000 customers, city officials said.
The storm was expected to move over southern Alabama and Mississippi today.
In Grady County in southwestern Georgia, a 10-year-old boy drowned in a drainage ditch swollen by 10 to 12 inches of rain near Cairo on Saturday.
“He was playing in a culvert,” said Jim Ellis, emergency management director for Grady County. “I presume he was sucked down into it and he was overcome by the rush of waters.”
Ellis said another person, possibly an adult, who was with the boy had been taken to Grady General Hospital with injuries.
Their identities were not immediately available.
In the New Orleans area, which is approaching the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, emergency officials were monitoring the storm and telling residents of the potential for heavy rain and the need to avoid low areas that could flood.
In Slidell, La., forecasters predicted 3 to 5 inches of rain could fall.
