In a scene repeated across 300 miles of Gulf Coast in four states, from Florida’s Panhandle to the bayous of Louisiana, Dorothy Bridges planned her escape Tuesday from the approaching wrath of Hurricane Ivan.
“I’m terrified,” said Bridges, 73, who had just returned to her trailer home in Pensacola after being hospitalized following a heart attack. “Complete heart failure–and now this.”
As Bridges waited for her daughter to get her Tuesday afternoon, forecasters said the edges of Ivan could begin to lash the Gulf Coast late Wednesday.
Ivan’s terrible effects might be felt anywhere in a huge swath between Grand Isle, La., south of New Orleans, and Apalachicola, Fla., southwest of Tallahassee. Hurricane-force winds would pound outward 100 miles from the storm’s powerful center, forecasters said.
Pensacola is in the middle of the stretch where forecasters said Ivan could come ashore. As forecasters said Tuesday afternoon that the monster storm appears to be edging toward the west, people in Florida’s Panhandle knew that meant they could see extensive damage because the eastern side of a hurricane brings the most powerful winds and storm surge.
With Ivan’s 140 m.p.h. winds churning several hundred miles to the south in the Gulf of Mexico, and landfall predicted for Thursday, officials in Escambia County, where Pensacola is located, ordered trailer home residents to evacuate. Thousands of others in low-lying areas along the coast also were told to leave. The storm is blamed for at least 68 deaths in the Caribbean.
Officials urged caution, opening 10 evacuation shelters around Pensacola and areas farther inland. Mandatory evacuations were ordered in low-lying areas. In Alabama, everyone living south of Interstate 10 was ordered to leave while Mississippi closed 12 coastal casinos and ordered mandatory evacuations of coastal areas.
In New Orleans, where the city is below sea level, thousands jammed roads amid a state of emergency and dire warnings that the storm could overwhelm the city of 1.5 million people with up to 20 feet of water.
In the gulf, oil companies evacuated workers from drilling and production rigs; shipping companies voluntarily halted traffic on the lower Mississippi River.
Panhandle spared until now
Twice in the last month Florida has been struck by killer hurricanes, although the Panhandle was largely spared the brunt of Charley and received a glancing blow from Frances.
President Bush asked Congress on Tuesday for another $3.1 billion to help Florida and other states recover. The Federal Emergency Management Agency assured residents that they would be served swiftly in Ivan’s aftermath, though the agency has already been at work helping those devastated by Charley and Frances.
As for Bridges, who planned to stay 45 miles inland at her daughter’s home, she said, “Today, I’m sick . . . I’d like to get into bed and just stay there. But I can’t do it. I have to leave.”
Near the trailer park, Bridges’ landlady lives in a house that is not in a mandatory evacuation zone. But Mildred Robinson, 70, said she planned to leave anyway.
“When the treetops get to blowing and swaying, I get nervous,” Robinson said. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got rabbit in me.”
None of her trailer park tenants plan to stay. Too many have seen pictures, or witnessed firsthand, what a hurricane can do when it gets hold of a trailer.
“You don’t have to tell them to go,” Robinson said. “Everybody will go. If you’re smart at all, you’re going to go. I tell them I wouldn’t stay, but I can’t run them out. Your best bet is to get yourself and go while you’re ahead.”
Others, however, prepared to dig in despite mandatory evacuation orders. Officials cannot force people to go if they refuse.
Mark Hlubek, 44, bought his home a year ago on a peninsula jutting into Pensacola Bay, where a mandatory evacuation order took effect Tuesday morning. He wants to be on hand to make quick repairs to his home, if necessary.
One neighbor told him of fixing a hole in the roof when the eye of Hurricane Opal passed through in 1995. The neighbor evacuated this time, but Hlubek wants to be on hand for any roof fixing that needs to be done.
Originally from Clinton, Iowa, Hlubek moved to Florida three years ago to be near other family members, who made the move a decade ago.
Hlubek’s father, Paul, helped him board the windows Tuesday morning. If a storm surge engulfs the home, Paul Hlubek has a plan.
“I’m going to stand on the couch,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave this place by itself,” explained Mark Hlubek. “Maybe that’s foolish. But I just bought it a year ago.”
Calm before the storm
Elsewhere in Pensacola, residents were calm about the approaching storm. They take the threat seriously, but say they will be safe whether it comes ashore here or down the coast.
“My brother lives in upstate New York and he called to say, `I can’t believe you’re not leaving,'” said another resident, Buddy Bolter, 39. “I said, `Do you leave when a blizzard is coming?'”
CamDaniels was packing her mini-van with belongings that she planned to put in storage.
Daniels, 30, has been living in a trailer home for the past six months with her 3-year-old son and 65-year-old mother, waiting for a new house to be built.
“The only tenseness I’m feeling is from what’s going on inside my home with my mom,” she said. “`Do you have this? Do you have that?’ She’s nervous. She just wants to make sure we’re prepared.”
As she piled pictures and old record albums into the mini-van, Daniels said putting the stuff you can’t replace in storage is the best way she knows how to prepare.
