Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hermine hits Florida, heads north
East Coast prepares for winds and flooding from hurricane
DEKLE BEACH, Fla. — The first hurricane to hit Florida in more than a decade wiped away beachside buildings and toppled trees onto homes Friday before plowing inland on a path that could send it rolling up the densely populated East Coast with heavy rain, high winds and flooding.
Hermine quickly weakened to a tropical storm as it spun through Georgia and the Carolinas. But the National Hurricane Center predicted it would regain hurricane strength after reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The system could then lash coastal areas as far north as Connecticut and Rhode Island through Labor Day.
“Anyone along the U. S. East Coast needs to be paying close attention this weekend,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.
In Florida, Hermine’s main impact came in the form of power failures and damage from storm surges. A homeless man south of Gainesville died when a tree fell on him, Gov. Rick Scott said.
The Florida governor declared an emergency in 51 counties and said about 6,000 National Guardsmen stood ready to mobilize for the storm’s aftermath. The governors of Georgia and North Carolina also declared emergencies.
An estimated 325,000 people were without power in Florida and more than 107,000 in neighboring Georgia, officials said.
At 5 p. m. on the East Coast, the storm was centered about 30 miles southwest of Charleston, S.C., and moving northeast at 20 mph, according to the hurricane center. Maximum sustained winds were 50 mph.
The system was forecast to strengthen back into a hurricane by Monday morning off the Maryland-Delaware coast before weakening again as it moves north. Tropical storm watches and warnings were posted up and down the coastline.
In Florida, a storm surge at Dekle Beach damaged numerous homes and destroyed storage buildings and a 100-yard fishing pier. The area is about 60 miles southeast of St. Marks, where Hermine made landfall at 1:30 a.m. in the Big Bend area, where Florida’s peninsula and panhandle meet.
Nancy Geohagen walked around collecting photos and other items for her neighbors after the storm scattered them.
“I know who this baseball bat belongs to,” she said plucking it from a pile of debris.
An unnamed spring storm that hit the beach in 1993 killed 10 people who refused to evacuate. This time, only three residents stayed behind. All escaped injury.
In Keaton Beach, about two dozen people waited on a road just after sunrise Friday, trying to get to their homes. Police blocked the road because of flooding.
Dustin Beach, 31, rushed there from a hospital in Tallahassee, where his wife had given birth Thursday night to a girl, to see whether his home still stood.
“When my wife got up this morning, she said, ‘Go home and check on the house. I need to know where we’re going after we leave the hospital,’” Beach said.
High winds knocked trees onto several houses in Tallahassee, injuring people inside.
In Wakulla County, south of Tallahassee, at least seven homes were damaged by falling trees, said Scott Nelson, the county’s emergency manager.
As Hermine surged into southern Georgia, 84-yearold Melvin Gatlin Sr. awoke before dawn to the sound of a thundering crack that shook his whole house.
The storm’s winds uprooted a pine tree in Gatlin’s backyard and sent it crashing onto his home of more than 40 years. The trunk crushed a storage shed and made a tear in the roof.
“I thought somebody had shot me, the way it sounded,” Gatlin said a few hours later in his living room, where a cooking pot on the floor caught water dripping from the ceiling.
Georgia’s top emergency response official said that by midday Friday, the storm was having less of an impact on the state than he had expected.
No deaths or major structural damage had been reported in 56 Georgia counties under an emergency declaration, Jim Butterworth, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said in a telephone interview. Tropical storm force winds seemed to dissipate quickly as Hermine moved over dry land into Georgia.
“With a storm like this you absolutely can’t tell until the true impact comes inland,” Butterworth said.
Property damage appeared to be mostly scattered reports of trees on homes and cars, Butterworth said, and a few people suffered minor injuries from cleanup efforts, including a couple of mishaps with chain saws.
Emergency officials were looking into a report of a possible tornado touching down early Friday at a gated golf community in Savannah.