By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 4, 1995; Page A3

MIAMI, AUG. 3—A reconstituted Erin puffed itself back into a hurricane and hit the Sunshine State again today at Pensacola on the Florida Panhandle, where gusts of 100 mph blew down power lines, toppled trees and tore off roofs but caused no fatalities.

More than 100,000 residents and tourists fled Gulf Coast communities from Florida to Louisiana, jamming shelters and seeking rooms in motels as far as 200 miles inland.

Many residents appeared to be taken by surprise by the fickle storm, which has vexed forecasters trying to pinpoint its landfalls. Wednesday night, for example, the National Hurricane Center was mentioning New Orleans as a potential landfall site.

Trees blocked coastal roads and knocked down power lines. Signs were blown over, and some pleasure and fishing boats were sunk. Roof tiles and shingles were missing on many beachfront homes, as well as awnings, screens and windows, according to emergency management officials in Florida and Alabama.

But the hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, was a relatively weak storm and was downgraded to a tropical storm this evening after passing Mobile, Ala.

Erin was no Hugo, which smashed South Carolina's coast in 1989, or Andrew, which leveled parts of Dade County south of Miami in 1992.

Heavy rains and flooding were likely to cause more damage than the winds. The heaviest rains in Florida, accompanied by tornadoes, have come after the storm's eye passed.

The eye of Erin passed over Pensacola at midday and then hit Mobile this afternoon. By early evening, winds were decreasing and the storm was breaking up as it moved inland.

The forecasted path was for Erin's remnants to move from Mobile across southern Alabama, then pass into Mississippi and eastern Arkansas, the hurricane center in Coral Gables, Fla., said tonight.

Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) asked President Clinton today for a federal disaster declaration, while the governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana declared state emergencies and ordered evacuations of coastal and low-lying areas. In Alabama alone, a state official estimated that 100,000 residents and tourists had taken to the roads to avoid the storm.

But Alabama Gov. Fob James (R) said the storm damage was slight, though he worried about the effects of the hurricane on the state's pecan and soy crops.

The relatively weak but wet hurricane first made landfall early Wednesday morning at Vero Beach on the central east coast of Florida. It was downgraded to a tropical storm as it passed Orlando and Tampa but then it gained strength again over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm caused two deaths in Florida and was blamed for leaving five people missing at sea, including three people who were aboard a floating casino that sank off Cape Canaveral.

In Pensacola today, residents told reporters there they were taken by surprise. "The wind beat it so hard it bent the door almost in half," Lori Sheldt of Pensacola Beach told the Associated Press. Sheldt lives on a barrier island south of Pensacola and spoke with the wire service while Erin's eye passed overhead.

Gulf Power Co. reported that more than half its customers had no electricity. There were spotty power outages across the Gulf Coast.

But by early evening, many residents were returning to their homes in Pensacola, though it looked as if they would spend the night without electricity.