On the roads leading into town, ancient oak trees lay on their sides, crushed homes and businesses marred the view, and telephone poles lay splintered and ruined. People sat in their cars at gas stations, hoping to be the first in line when -- if -- the power came on. At a Tom Thumb gas station and convenience store in Pace, a small Panhandle town in rural Santa Rosa County, manager Sheila Colwell boiled water for an outdoor grill.
"We're barbecuing water," she said. "Anything that's not nailed down is for sale."
Devastation is evident at the Grande Lagoon subdivision off Gulf Beach Highway in Pensacola, Fla., one day after Hurricane Ivan tore through the area.
(Michael Spooneybarger -- Tampa Tribune Via AP)
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_____Tracking Ivan_____
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Interactive: Get weather reports from cities in the storm's path.
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Map: Gulf Coast storm track.
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Storm Surge: How a hurricane's most-damaging element is created.
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Florida and its Gulf Coast neighbors -- Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi -- are hurricane veterans, and people there prepared extensively for Ivan's arrival. But people in other states drenched by the storm were less prepared.
"We did have some idea that Hurricane Ivan was heading our way, but some people got caught off guard," said Jennifer Collins, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. "Georgians are very resilient, however, and people are already going through the recovery process."
Yet even as the relief effort began, much of northern Georgia's Gilmer County was underwater and flooding was also reported in the Atlanta area.
Some of the worst flooding was in North Carolina, where at least eight deaths are blamed on the storm.
"That's a devastating loss to those families," said Mark Van Sciver, a spokesman for the North Carolina Emergency Management Agency.
Farms were battered throughout the south, but nowhere worse than Georgia, where the peanut and cotton crops are in perilous conditions. Many fields are flooded, and growers are hoping that the waters will recede soon enough to let them get into the fields and harvest before more storms arrive.
"The mood is one of high anxiety," Tom Stallings, a Funston cotton grower, told the Associated Press.
The troubles with Georgia's crops come after the devastating effects of Frances and Charley on Florida's citrus industry, making the trio of storms a huge threat to the stability of the Southeast's agricultural industry.
But the concerns about the plants in the groves were outweighed Friday by the concerns of people in the streets. Thousands are in shelters. Hour-long lines are forming for gasoline and water. And waves are breaking through countless seaside homes.
Staff writers Manny Fernandez in Pace, Fla., and Steve Ginsberg and Mary Fitzgerald in Washington contributed to this report.
