Hurricane Season
Ivan inflicts 'tremendous damage
Clean up begins; at least 13 dead
17.09.2004

GULF SHORES, Alabama - Floodwaters lingered in coastal towns, debris ranging from household knickknacks to entire boats littered the streets and a missing 12-foot alligator named Chuckie hindered cleanup efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan.

The U.S. death toll from Ivan, which crashed onto land at Gulf Shores with 130 mph winds, stood at 13 -- seven of them in the Florida Panhandle, where the eastern edge of the storm spawned tornadoes well before the eye made landfall.

Ivan was blamed for more than 60 deaths in the Caribbean nations of Jamaica and Grenada before hitting the United States.

Three deaths in northern Georgia are being blamed on the storm, according to the state's emergency management agency. A utility worker was electrocuted in Towns County; in neighboring White County, floodwaters swept away a 4-year-old boy, who was recovered and later pronounced dead; and anotherdied when a tree fell on a car, possibly the result of a tornado, Franklin County Emergency Management Director Jones Beasley said.

In the northwest corner of Alabama, a volunteer firefighter died after his vehicle hit a downed tree in Anderson, according to Lauderdale County Emergency Management Agency 911 director George Grabryan.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency reported two storm-related deaths.

A man was electrocuted in Lee County near Tupelo after he attempted to remove an antenna from a power line, according to a MEMA news release.

About 70 miles south in Noxubee County, a man helping a neighbor remove a tree limb from his home died when another tree limb fell during high wind gusts, the news release said.

In Florida, four deaths were the result of a tornado in the Panhandle town of Blountstown, west of Tallahassee, which destroyed two mobile homes and a house. Santana Sullivan said she and her fiancé left their trailer in Blountstown on Wednesday to stay with her mother and found "a clear lot" when she returned.

"Everything's gone,". "There's nothing left. My car was sitting in the front yard. It's totaled completely."

Among the items lost in their home were the wedding rings Sullivan and her fiancé, Chris Ammonds, planned to exchange next month.

Two others died in tornadoes in and around the spring break mecca of Panama City Beach on Wednesday afternoon. In Santa Rosa County, emergency management officials said a young girl in Milton died when a tree fell on her house. And the fate of a truck driver whose rig plunged off a damaged bridge into Escambia Bay, near Pensacola, was not known Thursday evening.

Ivan hit Gulf Shores early Thursday as a Category 3 storm, blasting the Alabama resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and ripping into the western Panhandle city of Pensacola.

"I've been down here 24 years, and this is the worst I've seen," said Sgt. Al Fryer, a Pensacola police spokesman.

"All beachfront and everything on the waterfont is devastated, and the damage is extreme," he said.

The beach boardwalk in Gulf Shores was destroyed, Police Chief Arthur Bourne said, and homes, hotels and condominiums were ravaged by a storm surge that drove a wall of water over the barrier islands along the Gulf of Mexico.

The city has imposed a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew, Bourne said. And an indefinite curfew was imposed in Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, authorities there said.

Alabama Governor Bob Riley said local officials had been concerned about looting in the hardest-hit areas around Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, which have been heavily developed since Hurricane Frederic in 1979 -- "But unless you looted out of a boat, it would be very difficult to do."

Ivan was reduced to a tropical depression late Thursday after sweeping into north-central Alabama as a tropical storm, knocking out power as far north as Birmingham and Atlanta. Forecasters warned that the storm remained dangerous, likely to spawn further tornadoes and dump 8 to 12 inches of rain on communities in its path.

"Entire houses were taken off their foundations and disappeared because of the storm surge on the barrier islands," Florida Governor Jeb Bush said. "These are newly built luxury homes that don't exist right now. That's pretty powerful."

More than 1.1 million people were reported without power Thursday afternoon. President Bush declared major disaster areas in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, making federal funding and aid available to residents of those states affected by the storm. (State-by-state impact)

Four hospitals in the Pensacola area were damaged by the storm. High winds sheared off part of the facade of a wing of West Florida Hospital that housed medical offices, spokeswoman Kathy Houser said. But patient wings were not damaged, and authorities believe the building is structurally sound, she said.

The Florida National Guard was dispatching nearly 2,800 troops to Pensacola. National Guard troops also were being deployed to Baldwin County, Alabama, east of Mobile, Emergency Management spokeswoman Colette Boehm said.

The entire county was without electricity Thursday evening, and residents would not be allowed in Gulf Shores or Orange Beach for another 48 hours, she said.

Island flooded
In Gulf Shores, the Alabama Gulf Shores Zoo was in a shambles, with the waterlogged ground littered with pieces of wood and other debris. Most of the animals were evacuated before the storm, but authorities were looking for several deer and six alligators that hadn't been evacuated and have been seen wading -- or swimming -- around the flooded island.

Among them is "Chuckie," a 1,000-pound, 12-foot-long reptile, and zoo officials spent three hours fruitlessly searching for the animal by canoe Thursday afternoon.

"We cannot send people in to assess more of the damages until we find the big boy," one zoo worker told us.

Across the mouth of Mobile Bay, authorities reported Dauphin Island had been badly hit as well.

"Dauphin Island has sustained extensive damage to its structures over the entire island and is most severe on the west side of the island," Alabama Emergency Management Agency Director Bruce Baughman said. The island was hit hard by Hurricane Frederic, "and as with 1979, they've got sand covering the entire island."

In Florida, Gulf Power reported about 80 percent of its customers, or nearly 339,000 homes, were without power Thursday morning. Officials in Mississippi reported 145,000 customers with no electricity on the coast, and about 630,000 customers in Alabama had no power.

Michael Brown, Federal Emergency Management Agency director, said rescue and assessment teams would move into affected areas Thursday. FEMA teams had been prepositioned from Atlanta to New Orleans, he said. FEMA still has teams in Florida working with the victims of hurricanes Charley and Frances.

"We dodged a big one."
Ivan veered slightly eastward as it approached land late Wednesday, sparing Mobile from the worst of its impact. Mobile Mayor Mike Dow said damage to his city appeared less extensive than feared. Dow said he saw only three downed trees on a 12-mile drive around the city of town of 250,000.

"I think we caught a bullet with our teeth," - "I think, overall, considering the enormity of what was thought to be meant for us here, we dodged a big one."