100,000 Flee as Hurricane Tides Lash Atantic Coast : Half Million Others Told to Get Ready

More than 100,000 coastal residents streamed inland today, leaving fishing and resort villages boarded up like ghost towns as Hurricane Gloria thundered northward with 130-m.p.h. winds on a path that threatened an area from Virginia to New England.

Hurricane warnings flew from Cape Romain, S.C., to Cape Henry, Va., storm sirens wailed along the stretch of coast under immediate threat and an additional 500,000 people were told to be ready to flee.

Families who had boarded up their homes and packed belongings jammed highways in a mass exodus to higher ground.

Ominous Signals

The first ominous signs of Gloria, described as one of the most powerful storms to threaten the Atlantic coast this century, were apparent along the Carolina coast by midday, with tides and winds rising and rain falling in some areas.

“The tides are running the highest I have ever seen on this beach,” said June Sloan, a motel manager at Wrightsville Beach. “The waves broke against the dunes. The waves are very large.”

The National Hurricane Center said the eye of Gloria was expected to sweep late today or early Friday over North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a string of barrier islands dotted with resorts and fishing villages, and then plow northward.

The National Weather Service said New England is “looking down a gun barrel.”

“The whole area of the Northeast is threatened,” hurricane forecaster Jim Lynch said.

New York on Friday

He said the threat to New Jersey and New York will probably be Friday night. “Just a one- or two-degree change in the storm’s track could move it from New Jersey to Massachusetts,” Lynch added.

North Carolina Gov. James G. Martin placed 2,500 National Guard troops on alert, schools were closed and the Red Cross rushed to set up storm shelters along the coast.

At midday, the hurricane’s center was located about 300 miles south of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and moving north-northwest at 15 m.p.h.

Gloria was gradually turning more to the north and was expected to pass near Cape Hatteras in the middle of the Outer Banks, where Sir Walter Raleigh founded the first English settlement in the New World four centuries ago.

Outer Banks Endangered

“It has the potential for putting a storm surge of 8 to 12 feet over the Outer Banks. If the storm surge is that high, those islands would literally go underwater,” chief hurricane forecaster Neil Frank said.

Civil defense officials prepared the nation’s capital for Gloria’s torrential rains and violent winds. Workers secured scaffolding at the Jefferson Memorial to prevent damage to its marble, and officials said high winds could force the closing of the Washington Monument.

New Englanders were urged to store food and fill up gas tanks for what could be the first hurricane to strike the region directly in 25 years. Officials said they feared that millions of people who have never felt the force of a severe hurricane would ignore the warnings.

Police cruised Atlantic Beach blasting sirens and urging people to leave. “You just have to have faith in God and continue one step at a time, right?” said Louise Chenzerit as she frantically packed her bags.

Five surfers bobbed in eight-foot waves off Atlantic Beach until officers waved them back to shore. Residents threw a “hurricane party” at Indian Beach.