Gulf Coast Relaxes as Hurricane Fizzles

Hurricane Florence fizzled early Saturday, bringing heavy rains and gusty winds to the Gulf Coast but relatively little of the destruction the once-powerful storm threatened.

Daybreak brought relief from a tense night for hundreds of thousands of coastal residents from Louisiana to Florida and allowed some to ridicule the storm they had feared just hours earlier.

“It was a wimp,” declared a seasoned New Orleans morning disk jockey. “I suppose the next one will come ashore wearing Bermuda shorts and sunglasses.”

“She’s a bit of a shoo-shoo--a firecracker that didn’t pop,” a local Louisiana official told the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate.

Highways were jammed with people returning to their lowland homes after a night in emergency shelters and with friends and relatives. An estimated 25,000 people fled the coastal lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

As the evacuees made their way home, a new hurricane, Gilbert, formed in the Caribbean. That storm, with winds clocked at 75 m.p.h., was about 225 miles southeast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, weather officials said.

By Saturday afternoon, the remnants of Hurricane Florence had moved over southwestern Mississippi, spreading heavy rains across Mississippi and Alabama and triggering at least one tornado. Winds had dropped from about 60 m.p.h. when the storm reached land to 35 m.p.h.--far short of the 100 m.p.h. some forecasters had predicted.

Wallace, Ala., reported more than five inches of rain from the storm and roads in Florida’s Santa Rosa County reportedly were under water. Residents in southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle were cautioned to watch for flash flooding.

By first light Saturday, the National Weather Service had downgraded the storm to a tropical depression and canceled all weather warnings. Preliminary reports from law enforcement agencies indicated that damage was relatively light for a hurricane.

Trees were uprooted, some roofs were damaged and power lines were down, but by mid-morning caravans of repair crews had restored electric service to more than half of the estimated 115,000 homes that were left without power.

One Alabama man drowned Friday while trying to tie down a boat, but only one serious injury during the night was reported. “A tree fell on a man who for some unknown reason was outside,” a New Orleans city spokeswoman said.

Authorities said that despite the hurricane’s lack of punch, the evacuations had been a reasonable precaution. The storm came ashore 23 years to the day after Hurricane Betsy swept out of the Gulf and across Louisiana, killing more than 70 people. Another 15,000 people were injured by that storm, which cut through Louisiana and Florida and as far north as the Ohio Valley.

Damage from Betsy was estimated at $1.2 billion.