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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:24
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quote:
Hurricane Ivan Takes Aim at Mobile, Ala.
Email this Story
Sep 15, 11:54 PM (ET)
By GARRY MITCHELL
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Hurricane Ivan and its 135-mph winds churned toward this historic port city with frightening intensity Wednesday as the storm began its assault on the Gulf Coast, lashing the region with heavy rain and ferocious wind, spawning monster waves that toppled beach houses and spinning off deadly tornadoes.
The storm was expected to make landfall early Thursday near Mobile and could swamp the coastline with a 16-foot storm surge and up to 15 inches of rain. Ivan offered a daylong preview of its destruction as it took aim at the coast: Sheets of rain across the region, a series of tornadoes, and escalating winds that shredded signs, knocked out power and made traffic lights and oak trees whipsaw.
"We have never seen a hurricane of this size come into Alabama," Gov. Bob Riley said, who earlier asked President Bush to declare much of the state a disaster area.
An 11th-hour shift turned Ivan away from New Orleans, but the sheer size of the storm could create catastrophic flooding in the bowl-shaped city. Officials warned that the levees and pumping stations that normally hold back the water may not be enough to protect the below-sea-level city.
In the Florida Panhandle near Panama City, tornadoes produced by the storm killed two people and damaged more than 70 homes. Rescuers dug through rubble Wednesday night but found no one trapped underneath.
"We have a report from a deputy that it looks like a war zone," said sheriff's spokeswoman Ruth Sasser.
Hurricane-force winds extended out 105 miles from the Category 4 storm, threatening widespread damage no matter where it strikes. After reaching land, Ivan threatened to stall over the Southeast and southern Appalachians, with a potential for as much as 20 inches of rain.
At 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Ivan was centered about 65 miles south of the Alabama coast and was moving north at 12 mph. The storm, which plowed through the Caribbean, has now killed at least 70 people in all.
Ivan's waves - some up to 25 feet - were already destroying homes along the Florida coast Wednesday. Twelve-foot waves boomed ashore at Gulf Shores, Ala., eroding the beach. A buoy about 300 miles south of Panama City registered waves over 34 feet high.
In Mobile, majestic oaks that line the streets swayed in gusting winds as the city of some 200,000 braced for a hurricane expected to be even more destructive than Frederic, which killed five people 25 years ago.
At least 11,000 people crowded into 95 shelters across Alabama, and thousands more went to homes of relatives and friends.
Betty Sigler, a 57-year-old substitute teacher, evacuated her home in Mobile and found shelter in a high school cafeteria. "Say a prayer, say a prayer, say a prayer that I'll have some place to go when I leave here," she said. "We'll see in the morning."
One potential target of Ivan is the tiny town of Hurricane, Ala., where the storm surge could be the highest.
Mobile bar owner Lori Hunter said her business would remain closed "until the landlord takes the boards down off the windows."
"We're staying," she said. "I'm from New York. This is my first one. Terrorists scare me but not a hurricane."
As the storm drew near, streets along Mississippi's Gulf Coast were all but deserted, and miles of homes and businesses, including its 12 floating casinos, were boarded up. Only patrol cars and an occasional luggage-packed car or van could be seen passing Gulfport's "Welcome to the Gulf Coast" billboard.
New Orleans scrambled to get people out of harm's way, putting the frail and elderly in the cavernous Louisiana Superdome and urging others to move to higher floors in tall buildings.
"If we turn up dead tomorrow, it's my fault," said Jane Allinder, who stayed stubbornly behind at her daughter's French Quarter doll shop to keep an eye on her cat.
Police began clearing people off the streets, enforcing a 2 p.m. curfew.
"I think it's safe to say we will have flooding in this city," said Mayor Ray Nagin. However, he contradicted a statement from his emergency preparedness director that the city needed at least 10,000 body bags to handle possible drowning victims.
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.
A cancer patient and an 80-year-old nursing home resident died after they evacuated and were caught in hours-long traffic jams.
Thousands of tourists were believed stranded in New Orleans, along with 100,000 mostly inner-city residents without cars. The mayor advised them to resort to "vertical evacuations," suggesting they take shelter in buildings taller than two stories. If that is not possible, he said, they should go into an attic and take equipment with them that would allow them to cut through the roof and get out.
Rick Pfeifer, a salesman from Washougal, Wash., was stuck in New Orleans with no flights out and no cars to rent after arriving earlier this week for a National Safety Congress convention. His storm rations included as many chips, pretzels and bottled water as he could buy.
"I'm going to ride it out in the high-ground area of the city," he said wryly. "Fourth floor in a good hotel, with a good bar."
Frail, elderly and sick residents unable to get out were moved to the 72,000-seat Louisiana Superdome, where 200 cots in upper-deck concourses supplanted the dome's usual tenant, the New Orleans Saints.
LuLinda Williams wept after dropping off her bedridden grandmother, who is on oxygen, at the Superdome. Only one family member was allowed to stay with each patient, so Williams left her daughter.
"I thought they'd let the family stay with them," Williams said. "Where are the rest of us supposed to go now? How are we supposed to know she's OK?"
Nagin later said the dome would also be opened as a one-night last resort for able-bodied storm refugees. The last time that happened during Hurricane Georges in 1998, the 14,000 refugees nearly did more damage than the storm itself. Countless televisions, seat cushions and bar stools were stolen, and workers spent months cleaning graffiti off the walls.
Winds howled across Louisiana's bayous with enough force to topple trees and knock out power.
"We heard a loud pop, and I thought, not already," said Harold Plaisance, who had been sitting on the porch watching the storm in the fishing village of Lafitte.
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Editor's Note: Associated Press reporters Mary Foster in New Orleans, David Royse in Apalachicola, Shelia Hardwell Byrd in Gulfport, Miss, Jay Reeves in Mobile, Ala., and Bill Kaczor in Pensacola, Fla., contributed to this report.
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040916/D854GSO01.html
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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:24
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quote:
Posted on Thu, Sep. 16, 2004
Man rides out Ivan in fortress-like house on Pensacola Beach
Associated Press
PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. - Mark Sigler was probably one of the few people who could sleep soundly with Hurricane Ivan's battering waves, 130-mph winds and flying debris slamming into his house.
Ivan was the first test for his Dome of a Home on the Gulf of Mexico, a veritable fortress built to withstand winds up to 200 mph.
"I was afraid at first when the storm started whether it was going to work or not," he said.
But his fear didn't last long. The house is made of a single slab of steel-reinforced concrete shaped like a dome and is covered by waterproof foam. It weighs about 850 tons, compared to about 25 tons for a normal house, Sigler said.
"You have a one-piece concrete house with five miles of steel in it," he said. "The house did exactly what it's supposed to do."
The Gulf's water washed neighboring houses out to sea, but caused little damage to his.
"We could hear pieces of the other houses breaking up and smashing into the house," he said.
He spent years planning to construct what he calls a hurricane-proof building after seeing his previous house severely damaged by Hurricane Opal in 1995. He found that the dome shape was stronger architecturally and got a federal grant to help with construction, which was finished 14 months ago.
The house looks like the cross section of an egg. Two breakaway staircases led up to the entrances, but they ripped away as they were designed when Ivan's force became too strong.
An NBC television news crew rode Ivan out in the house with Sigler to beam live feeds for broadcast. Sigler hoped the national attention would promote his building style, but the excitement wasn't enough to keep him awake.
"I went to sleep about 11, and I just woke up," he said at dawn.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiheral.../9679572.htm?1c
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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:24
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quote:
Pensacola in pieces
Ivan rips up Panhandle; 20 die in U.S.
FROM STAFFAND WIRE REPORTS
PENSACOLA -- Hurricane Ivan drilled the Gulf Coast on Thursday with 130-mph winds that inflicted far less damage than feared everywhere except the Panhandle, where residents were left with surge-ravaged beachfronts, flooded streets and homes ripped apart by deadly tornadoes.
The storm was blamed for at least 20 U.S. deaths, most of them in Florida.
"We were prepared for the hurricane, but the tornadoes were bam, bam, bam," said Glenda Nichols, manager of the Microtel Inn in Marianna. "There was nothing we could do about it. I put all my guests in their rooms and told them to get in the bathtubs."
Ivan quickly deteriorated to a tropical storm after coming ashore. But forecasters warned it was not done yet: It threatened up to 15 inches of rain and flooding across the South, already soggy after Hurricanes Charley and Frances over the past month.
More than 2 million residents along a 300-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast cleared out as Ivan, a former 165-mph monster that killed 70 people in the Caribbean, closed in on an unsteady path.
Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores Beach, Ala., about 3 a.m., but it was the Panhandle -- squarely in the northeast quadrant of the storm, where the winds are most violent -- that took the brunt.
Ivan spun off at least a dozen tornadoes in Florida, while creating a storm surge of 10 to 16 feet, topped by large battering waves. A portion of a bridge on Interstate 10, the major east-west highway through the Panhandle, was washed away.
Insurance experts put the storm's damage at anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion.
The death toll included 13 in Florida, two in Mississippi, and one in Georgia. In Louisiana, four evacuees died after being taken from their storm-threatened homes to safer parts of the state.
Many of the millions of Gulf Coast residents who spent a frightening night in shelters and boarded-up homes emerged to find Ivan was not the catastrophe many feared.
New Orleans, especially vulnerable to storms because much of it lies below sea level, got only some blustery winds, a mere two-tenths of an inch of rain and only some downed tree limbs. By Thursday morning, French Quarter tourists came out of their hotels to sip cafe au lait under brilliant sunshine. "Leaves in the pool -- that's it," said Shane Eschete, assistant general manager of the Inn on Bourbon Street.
Mobile, Ala., a port city of 200,000 that had been in the bull's-eye of the storm, got a break by an 11th-hour shift to the east. Still, its historic oak-tree-lined Government Street was blocked with tree limbs, metal signs, roofing material and other storm debris. The storm turned the night sky an eerie green with popping electrical transformers. President Bush plans to visit Alabama and Florida to survey the damage on Sunday, the White House said. Tornado warnings were issued across northeast Florida again Thursday, even as search-and-rescue teams were sent to check the rubble for any victims of the night-before twisters. "It's sad," said a weary Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "I don't know quite why we've had this run of storms. You just have to accept that." Hundreds of thousands of people were without power, including 90 percent of Gulf Power Co.'s customers in Florida. "It's catastrophic. The electric system it has taken us 80 years to build was basically destroyed in eight hours," spokesman John Hutchinson said, adding that it could take three weeks to restore power. In the Panhandle, destruction was seemingly around every corner.
Soon after the sun emerged, so did residents who spent the night hiding from the storm. Donnice Tripp moved and spoke slowly as she surveyed what used to be her Belmont Street home.
Ivan tore off the roof, flipping it over a car parked next door, before folding in the four walls. Tripp, who has lived in the wooden house for 10 years, said she could not think when she first saw it.
"I was in shock," she said. "I just can't believe this. This building has been here since 1909."
Next door to her, a blue wooden home looked like a pile of painted matchsticks. Its 83-year-old occupant had been inside when Ivan's fury began to rip off the kitchen, said neighbor Lillie Crosby. The woman escaped to her car, where she rode out the storm until about 7 a.m., when she fled to Crosby's house.
Crosby's house only sustained a few "bumps and bruises" but the terrifying night is one she does not want to repeat, she said. "I won't stay for another one."
The destoryed bridges make it hard for Florida National Guardsmen and other rescuers to make their way to parts of the battered coast.
Search and rescue teams with cadaver dogs turned to boats and U.S. Coast Guard teams were tapped to reach some barrier island regions of the Gulf Coast late into the evening.
Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 National Guard troops were zig-zagging their way around washed out bridges and roadways to reach Pensacola, where they where to arrive late Thursday to start policing streets, clearing debris and delivering aid to the ravaged city.
"Help is on the way," Gov. Jeb Bush said, adding "it's been a long day" for victims as well as rescue workers trying to gain access to Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, two of the hardest hit my Ivan's 133 mph winds and up to 10-foot storm surge.
Strong winds kept much of Florida's air power grounded, and highways and bridges from Interstate 10 over Escambia Bay near Pensacola through U.S. 98 along the coastline south of Tallahassee were flooded out.
Hundreds of military vehicles trying to reach Pensacola had to drive around the washed out Escambia Bay bridge to the east and U.S. 90 west of town, forcing National Guard drivers to divert hundreds of miles around the devastation.
Bush said Pensacola was the worst hit by Ivan.
"The news is really heartbreaking."
Damage to barrier islands is extensive. Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission teams are conducting search and rescue missions on barrier islands by boat, but even those efforts are hampered by rough seas, Bush said.
"The wind damage and the storm surge in this storm, particularly in the Pensacola area, is brutal," Bush said. "And the barrier islands were damaged. Entire houses were taken off their foundations and disappeared because of the storm surge. That's pretty powerful." At various staging grounds, state and federal relief crews had hundreds of generators, 1,500 truckloads of ice, food and water waiting for clear roads.
Florida Adjutant General Douglas Burnett said most of the military's aircraft transported to respond to Ivan had been grounded by dangerous crosswinds Thursday. By the weekend, he said, Florida would have 36 UH-60 Blackhawks and 24 CH-47 Chinooks flying missions across the Panhandle.
"You can't be there too early because you put the crews and equipment at risk," Burnett said.
Damage was immense and spread across hundreds of miles, much in counties left virtually unreachable by land, officials said. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and over 340,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Panhandle.
More than 13,000 people were reported in temporary shelters as a result of all three hurricanes. American Red Cross had handed out 75,000 meals to Ivan victims.
Florida Transportation Secretary Jose Abreu said U.S. 90 could be re-opened in a couple days, but that I-10 over the bay would take "months, if not longer" to reopen. He said 13 bridge inspection crews with divers were already at work testing submerged bridge supports, but no definitive list of damaged bridges was available.
Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings said she expected Ivan to take a heavier toll than Charley or Frances, based on reports from local authorities.
"The physical damage is going to be worse," Jennings said.
Staff writers Paige St. John and Aaron Deslatte, The Associated Press and Gannett News Service contributed to this report.
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http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN0917IVANMAIN.htm
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