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Thousands Flee as Fran Batters CarolinasHeaded to Virginia, Storm Is Bringing Torrential RainsBy Stephen BarrWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 6 1996; Page A01 © The Washington Post
Fran was forecast to spin off tornadoes as it moved north toward Raleigh and into Virginia. The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch until 11 a.m. today for areas 105 miles to either side of a line between Wilmington, N.C., and 50 miles northeast of Richmond, including the Norfolk area. Forecasters said large hail, damaging winds and lightning were likely and that Fran could pour 5 to 10 inches of rain or more on the area. Fran's width -- winds of hurricane force 140 miles from the eye and of tropical force 290 miles from the center -- made it comparable to Hurricane Hugo, the 1989 storm that landed here and killed 35 people and caused nearly $8 billion in damage in its devastating march up the East Coast from the Caribbean. Fran's death toll stood at two early this morning. A 66-year-old woman was killed in Conway, S.C., when her car skidded in standing water and hit a tree, and a woman in Onslow County, northeast of Wilmington, died when a tree fell on her trailer, the Associated Press reported. According to the National Hurricane Center, the north wall of Fran's 25-mile-wide eye passed over Cape Fear just before 8 p.m. Thursday. The storm veered slightly to the east and headed up the Cape Fear River to the port city of Wilmington. Its winds were diminishing as it moved inland, but an 83 mph gust was reported early today at Camp Lejeune, N.C. At 1 a.m., the National Weather Service said Fran was about 20 miles east of Fayetteville, N.C., and its sustained winds had dropped to 80 mph. Hurricane warnings stretched from Cape Fear to the Virginia border, and a tropical storm warning extended northward to Chincoteague, Va., including the lower Chesapeake Bay. In Wilmington, electrical power was lost about 3:30 p.m., but emergency generators were keeping electricity supplied to hospitals, officials said. Extensive flooding was reported south of the city, as Fran pushed waves of water over dunes. "You cannot walk outside now, it is blowing so hard," Bruce Shell, the spokesman at the emergency command center at the New Hanover County courthouse, said around 9 p.m. Winds were fierce and steady at 75 mph, but gusts in excess of 100 mph were hitting the beaches, he said. Some two dozen people had refused to leave Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, on low-lying barrier islands near Wilmington. From Carolina Beach, a frantic group of people who stayed in The Breakers condominium called 911 saying the building was collapsing in the storm surge, AP reported. But a New Hanover County official said the noise came from floating cars that were slamming into the building. In Wrightsville Beach, a CNN reporter told the network by telephone that its vehicles had floated away from a motel near one of the island's two fishing piers. In North Topsail Beach, a mobile home housing the town hall and police station since Hurricane Bertha had washed or blown away, and the southern end of the island was under water, AP said. "It's just not safe to go out and look at it. By daybreak [Friday], we should be able to get out and see," Shell said, " . . . and start licking our wounds." But Glenn Ivey of Kure Beach, N.C., told CNN early this morning that several houses there had tumbled into the Atlantic and others were on the brink. At Myrtle Beach, Mayor Bob Grissom said his city's damage checks would start at 6 a.m. "We're a tourist town. We have to get up and running as soon as possible," he said. Up to 20,000 houses were without power, Grissom said. Fran's blast knocked a church steeple off and tore up some roofs. While the early hours of the hurricane caused little flooding, the mayor said he was "anticipating" a major surge of seawater. At the state emergency management center in Raleigh, North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. (D) said that although initial reports were incomplete, "we know that there is very serious damage. The winds are terrific. We're getting really deep flooding, five to 10 feet on some of those roads on the coast. We're hearing about structures going down and of course a lot of trees. Power is out in many counties." Hunt said he had mobilized 1,000 National Guard troops and that 1,400 prisoners were ready to help with the first cleanup effort. "We're going to have damage throughout the state," said Hunt, who on Thursday declared a state of emergency in all of North Carolina's 100 counties. He said he also had asked President Clinton to declare a major disaster in the state. About 900 people took refuge in the four shelters in Wilmington, part of a network of more than 100 shelters set up by the Red Cross and local authorities across the Carolinas. Shell said there had been a "tremendous evacuation" in the Wilmington area Thursday. On Wednesday, Fran had forced South Carolina Gov. David M. Beasley to order the evacuation of his state's 190-mile coastline, putting about 500,000 of his coastal residents on a rainy day trek inland. National Hurricane Center spokesman Frank Lepore said the storm "has the potential to drop a lot of rain and when that stuff hits the foothills, there is a large potential for flash flooding." The first signs of Fran's fury came at Frying Pan Shoals, N.C., where the National Weather Service station reported wind gusts of 124 mph. The station is about 50 miles southeast of Wilmington. Many municipalities in the Carolinas ordered curfews; airline and rail service was halted. For many residents in this historic and elegant port city, Fran touched off terrifying memories of Hugo, which swept through Charleston just before midnight Sept. 21, 1989, destroying 17,000 homes and killing 27 people. The city spent 2 1/2 years recovering from Hugo, and the surrounding county spent $28 million just cleaning up debris. Verna Turner, buying last-minute supplies at the Meeting Street Piggly-Wiggly before it closed Thursday afternoon, said Hugo had taught her to be "a bit more prepared. With Hugo, I had never really experienced a hurricane before. With Fran, there is more fear." Lumber companies did a booming business. Almost all the store windows along King Street in the historic district here were covered with plywood. Downtown streets were deserted, as a steady rain poured. Fran's punch surprised some officials in coastal North Carolina communities who had not expected to feel the storm's force until nearly midnight. "I don't think we expected to see the winds pick up as fast as they did," said Anthony Wade, spokesman for the New Hanover County emergency operations center. "We knew that the storm was significant, but I don't think anyone appreciates a hurricane until you're sitting here, watching it." Staff writer Edward Walsh in Raleigh contributed to this report.
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