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Tropical storm could make history

Jason Redden does a back flip off the roof of a submerged car on a street near his house as Tropical Storm Fay brought heavy rains in Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday. Redden said he rescued the driver after she drove her car through the flooded street. PHOTO: AFP

Tropical Storm Fay continued to bear down on Florida’s Panhandle on a path that would vault the stubborn weather system into the record books.

If Fay strikes Florida again, as projected, it would be the first in recorded history to hit the state with such intensity four different times.

Though Fay never materialized into a hurricane, its zigzagging downpours have been punishing enough.

At least six people in Florida were dead from the storm, state officials said, and two more deaths reported on Friday were believed to be Fay-related. The state attributed an additional death, before the storm hit, to hurricane preparedness after a man testing generators died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“The damage from Fay is a reminder that a tropical storm does not have to reach a hurricane level to be dangerous and cause significant damage,” said Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who toured flooded communities last week.

Crist on Friday asked the White House to elevate the disaster declaration US President George W. Bush issued to a major disaster declaration.

Crist said the storm damaged 1,572 homes in Brevard County alone, dropping 64cm of rain in Melbourne, one of the hardest-hit areas on the central Atlantic coast.

Officials there carried boats down streets where just a day earlier 1.22m of water made roads look like rivers. Water several feet high remained in some neighborhoods, but most of the area had drained, leaving behind a half inch 1.27cm layer of muck and mud.

Counties in the Panhandle — including Bay, Escambia and Walton — opened their emergency operations centers on Friday in preparation for the storm’s expected arrival there. To Florida’s relief, forecasters expect Fay to weaken over the weekend and finally blow away before losing steam in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

In Steinhatchee, just south of Florida’s Big Bend, bartender Dana Watson said she was bracing for a possible drenching.

In an area that can flood badly when high tide rolls in during a bad storm, she said most people remain prepared.

“We’ve all got our generators filled up with gas and oil and our nonperishable food,” Watson said.

At 2am yesterday, the center of the storm was about 72km south-southwest of Tallahassee. It was moving west at 13kph, with sustained winds of about 80kph. The storm was expected to keep its strength and remain a tropical storm into today.

Tens of thousands of people were still without electricity, and residents of Florida’s storm-stricken Atlantic coast faced a weekend of cleanup after chest-high flooding. Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said so far nearly 4,000 flood claims from Fay had been filed.

Some 162 hectares of tomatoes were flooded in the southeastern portion of the state and one county on the Atlantic coast suffered some US$20 million in losses, mostly to cattle, citrus and nursery operations. There also were reports of grapefruits blown off trees in southeastern Florida and some areas where sugar cane was bent over from high winds.

Two tropical fish farms on the central Atlantic coast were decimated, state officials said.

Fay has been an unusual storm, even by Florida standards. It set sights on the state last Sunday and first made landfall in the Florida Keys on Monday.

The storm then headed out over open water again before hitting a second time near Naples on the southwest coast.

It limped across the state, popped back out into the Atlantic Ocean and struck again near Flagler Beach on the central coast. It was the first storm in almost 50 years to make three landfalls in the state, as most hit and exit within a day or two.


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