Hit-and-Run Dennis Howls Into Florida

Hurricane Dennis barreled into Florida’s Panhandle with vicious winds Sunday, peeling the roofs off buildings and pushing a 10-foot wall of water into a region still badly battered from last year’s storms.

Dennis made landfall as a Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds, creating blizzard-like whiteout conditions and a sound that one witness compared to the howling of a wolf. The storm left street signs twisted, power lines looped over roadways and homes in some seaside communities submerged in water up to their windows.

President Bush on Sunday declared portions of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi disaster areas, making them eligible for federal assistance. No storm-related deaths had been reported, a spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management said. Though the extent of the damage was uncertain, hundreds of thousands were left without power.

Still, many along the Gulf Coast felt relieved at the end of the day. The eye of the hurricane passed east of Pensacola, Fla., and struck a piney, less-populated stretch of coastline, then headed north at a high speed -- sparing residents the prolonged ordeal they suffered during slow-moving Hurricane Ivan in September.

“It’s like a maxi-tornado rolling through an area,” said Matthew Lopez, Escambia County’s chief of emergency management. “It means the damage is severe, but in a limited area.”

Hurricane Dennis, which killed 20 people as it swept through the Caribbean, alarmed meteorologists by intensifying rapidly as it traveled over the Gulf of Mexico.

By early Sunday, Dennis was a Category 4 storm on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds whipping up to 145 mph in its core. It would have been the first Category 4 storm to hit the Florida-Alabama border and the first to occur this early in the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November.

In the days leading up to the hurricane’s arrival, about 1.4 million people in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi were ordered to evacuate. They poured north on interstate highways, packing inland motels. As late as Sunday afternoon, the phone at the Days Inn in Montgomery, Ala., was ringing every three minutes with requests for rooms, said general manager Priti Patel.

“All we have to say is, ‘Sorry, we’re booked. Sorry, we’re booked,’ ” she said.

Residents who had shrugged off warnings to leave last year as Ivan approached were alert this time around.

Jo Dee Catrell of the American Red Cross, who was in charge of one shelter, watched a parade of evacuees, some carrying their own bedclothes, file into the Pensacola Civic Center -- ordinarily home to the Florida Panhandle’s minor league hockey team, the Ice Pilots.

“People have had it,” said Catrell, who lives in Pensacola. “What did we do to tick off Mother Nature?”

Coastal residents had prepared for the worst. But about 11 a.m. CDT Sunday, the storm weakened, its winds dropping to about 120 mph, said Martin Nelson, lead forecaster at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Authorities warned that the damage could be catastrophic anyway.

By late Sunday, Dennis had weakened to a tropical storm over southwest Alabama with 60 mph winds. As it moved north, the hurricane’s next-biggest threat -- tornadoes -- took over. Tornado watches and warnings were posted as far north as Atlanta.

The difference between a Category 4 and Category 3 hurricane is “a little bit like the difference between getting run over by a freight train and an 18-wheeler. Neither prospect is good,” said Max Mayfield, director of the hurricane center.

As Dennis moved north at the relatively high speed of 20 mph, it battered communities throughout the Southeast with winds and flooding.

A 10- to 12-foot tidal surge submerged homes and businesses in the Florida communities of St. Marks, Live Oak, Panacea and Oyster Bay, said Maj. Maurice Langston of the Wakulla County sheriff’s office. Roadways were clogged with tangles of seaweed, making them impassible, he said.

Authorities in Mississippi on Sunday launched a fevered, last-minute campaign to warn residents as far north as Meridian -- 150 miles from the Gulf of Mexico -- that they could be hit by hurricane-force gusts. Warnings of unusually strong winds extended as far as Memphis, Tenn., 400 miles north of the coast, said Lea Stokes, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in Jackson.

In Louisiana, the hurricane’s eastward trend brought a sense of relief. Emergency officials in New Orleans have long warned that a direct hit could mean disastrous flooding.

In the town of Des Allemands, La., authorities had postponed the Catfish Festival for the first time in its 31-year history. Kurt Dempster, chairman of the festival, said he woke up to a beautiful day.

“I guess we were just fortunate yet again,” he said. “It’s just one of those things.”

But along Florida’s Gulf Coast, Dennis came as a wrenching reminder of Ivan -- the vast Category 3 hurricane that hit Pensacola, a city of 57,000. That storm, which moved at a pace of 7 to 8 mph, left coastal subdivisions a surreal wreck, with boats lodged in living rooms and gables perched in the middle of residential streets. When a major bridge east of Pensacola collapsed, a truck driver plunged to his death, leaving his trailer suspended over the water for days.

In residential neighborhoods, people had braced themselves against garage doors to try to prevent wind from tearing the walls apart, or perched their children on countertops to keep them out of the water.

Afterward, rescue crews with corpse-sniffing dogs swarmed through neighborhoods. Ivan was blamed for 29 deaths in the U.S.

Residents still were grappling with losses from Ivan as Hurricane Dennis bore down, Catrell said.

“Their house just got fixed, or didn’t get fixed,” she said. “Their children are faced with reliving the ‘black storm’ -- the ‘black storm’ is what I’ve heard some children call it.”

Don Salter, a Santa Rosa County commissioner, felt his heart sink as he drove through town and saw debris trucks lined up, “like watching vultures gathering,” prepared for another round of property damage. Dennis, he thought, was “going to be the emotional hurricane.”

“A lot of people are physically strong,” Salter said, “but I don’t know how emotionally strong they are going to be.”

By the time the storm passed, most residents said Dennis had proved less punishing than expected.

Paul Coulombe, 64, a resident of Milton, Fla., in Santa Rosa County, rigged up a large generator and prepared for a long, dark afternoon. Like his neighbors, he stocked up on gasoline to guard against the shortages they experienced last fall.

“My neighbors and myself have a couple of trees broken off, scattered limbs down in the yard,” said Coulombe, who drives an ice cream truck. “But I don’t think it’s an iota compared to what happened last year.”

As darkness fell, Nick Zangari was serving a crowd of reporters and cameramen at his downtown Pensacola restaurant, New York Nick’s, which lacked both power and air conditioning.

Zangari, who kept his restaurant open through the storm, said the wind and rain had hit the city with a sudden explosion. When the eye arrived, he said, “it started tearing things up all at once.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Storming into Florida

Dennis, a Category 4 hurricane as it roared up the Gulf of Mexico, weakened into a Category 3 before landfall. A look at hurricane strengths and damage capabilities:

*--* Category Damage Sustained winds 1 Minimal 74-95 mph 2 Moderate 96-110 3 Extensive 111-130 4 Extreme 131-155 5 Catastrophic 156 and over

*--*

Source: National Hurricane Center

*

Dahlburg reported from Navarre and Barry from Atlanta. Times staff writer Scott Gold in Houston contributed to this report.