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Gold9472
07-10-2005, 12:33 PM
Time to 'just hunker down' for Dennis
Hurricane strengthens to Category 4, roars toward Gulf Coast

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Updated: 12:29 p.m. ET July 10, 2005

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. - Hurricane Dennis closed in on the Gulf Coast on Sunday with battering waves and high wind after strengthening into a dangerous Category 4 storm, roaring toward a region still patching up damage from a hurricane 10 months ago.

As the eye of the storm got closer to shore Sunday, wind exceeding 45 mph blew rain sideways and rolling waves pounded piers and beaches. Landfall was expected Sunday afternoon somewhere along the coast of the Florida Panhandle or Alabama in virtually the same spot as last year’s Hurricane Ivan.

People who stayed in the area wound up their preparations and rushed to get inside.

“It’s time now to just hunker down and ride it out,” Okaloosa County Emergency Management Chief Randy McDaniel said. “It’s just a matter of sitting and watching and waiting.”

The National Hurricane Center in Miami has no record of a Category 4 storm ever hitting the Florida Panhandle or Alabama.

With nearly 1.4 million people under evacuation orders, some towns in the projected path were almost deserted, and storm shelters were filling up in Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. More than 9,000 people were in shelters Sunday in Florida alone, and others headed to motels and relatives’ homes.

“We’re expecting to be sheltering tens of thousands,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Margaret O’Brien.

Even the police force evacuated Gulf Shores, Ala., instead of riding out the storm in a municipal building as they did during last year’s Hurricane Ivan, whose damage still scars the beach resort.

With the storm appearing likely to follow the path torn by the Category 3 Ivan, some buildings still had scaffolding around them and piles of debris lay in streets, ready to be launched into the air by fierce wind.

“I think there is a legitimate feeling, ’Why me? What did I do wrong?”’ Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said.

Blamed for at least 20 deaths in Haiti and Cuba, Dennis weakened to a Category 1 storm over Cuba, then retained strength in the Gulf on Saturday and became a Category 4 storm again early Sunday, with top sustained winds of 140 mph.

“Category 4 is not just a little bit worse — it’s much worse,” said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. “Damage increases exponentially as the wind speed increases. And no matter where it makes actual landfall, it’s going to have a tremendous impact well away from the center.”

Dennis would be the earliest Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Audrey struck the Louisiana and Texas coasts in June 1957, according to the hurricane center. The center has no record of a Category 4 storm ever hitting Florida’s Panhandle or Alabama.

Hurricane-force winds stretched out up to 40 miles from Dennis’ center, and they could go as far as 175 miles inland, forecasters said. A data buoy about 50 miles offshore recorded a 33-foot-high wave.

The worst weather from hurricanes is typically on the front right side of the storm, in this case to the east of where it hits. That puts places like Mobile, Ala., Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach firmly in the crosshairs, with a threat of more than a foot of rain plus waves on top of storm surge up to 15 feet.

West of Gulf Shores in Mobile County, the 40 to 50 vessels at the Sundowner Marina had been “double tied, retied and tied again,” said owner Cliff Lockett.

“I’ll lock it up and kiss it goodbye,” he said. “If it’s here in the morning, we’ll be happy.”

Before entering the Gulf, Dennis swung around the Florida Keys and dealt a glancing blow, flooding streets and knocking out power. As night fell Saturday and the first bands of rain started hitting Fort Walton Beach, nearly every business was closed.

One exception was Joe and Eddie’s, a diner providing short breaks for sheriff’s deputies working 12-hour shifts. “It’s the only place around that’s open,” deputy Jim Welch said.

About 700,000 people were under evacuation orders in Florida, as were 500,000 in Alabama and 190,000 in Mississippi. Traffic doubled on some highways as people fled inland. Alabama officials turned Interstate 65 into a one-way route north from the coast to Montgomery.

In Pensacola, a 79-year-old man at a special needs shelters died, apparently due to natural causes, Escambia County sheriff’s investigator Terry Kilgore said.

Police went through waterfront neighborhoods in coastal Panhandle cities advising residents of the mandatory evacuation orders. In Fort Walton Beach, they didn’t have any problem convincing Pat Gosney, who remained in his house across the street from an offshoot of Choctawhatchee Bay during Hurricane Ivan last year.

“That’s why we’re leaving,” Gosney said. “We’ll never stay again.”

At 11 a.m. EDT, Dennis’ eye was about 80 miles south-southeast of Pensacola in the Panhandle and 125 miles southeast of Mobile. It was moving north-northwest at about 18 mph, forecasters said.

For Gulf Coast residents, the approaching hurricane was all too familiar.

“I have my moments of bitterness, but I’m OK,” said Andrea Walter of Gulf Breeze, whose house was seriously damaged by Ivan. “You can’t get too discouraged or you’ll go crazy.”

princesskittypoo
07-10-2005, 01:22 PM
i don't know where my grandparents are. they aren't answering the phones. stupid old people should learn to listen to their grandkids!

somebigguy
07-10-2005, 04:14 PM
Its all a brilliant plan, ship the old people down south where all the hurricanes hit!!!

Otherwise those old people just live forever bleeding our social security dry...

princesskittypoo
07-10-2005, 06:46 PM
Its all a brilliant plan, ship the old people down south where all the hurricanes hit!!!

Otherwise those old people just live forever bleeding our social security dry...
kicks somebigguy.