Half-Million Flee as Hurricane Fran Pounds Carolinas

Hurricane Fran, blowing with dark fury, roared across Cape Fear late Thursday and sliced into North Carolina like an ax, killing one woman there and another in South Carolina and sending at least half a million people scrambling for safety.

Rain blew sideways. Waves taller than houses crashed into shore. Wind hurled rocks through windows and onto rooftops. Both North and South Carolina declared emergencies. Businesses closed, buses stopped running, and all Amtrak trains and airline flights were canceled.

The eye of the storm was 25 miles wide. Far inland, power lines tumbled, trees shredded and highways flooded, making travel hazardous. A woman was killed in Conway, S.C., when her car skidded through a patch of standing water and hit a tree. Another was killed just northeast of Wilmington, N.C., when a tree fell on her mobile home.

Fran was the second hurricane to hit Cape Fear this year. The first was Bertha, which killed 10 people in the Caribbean and along the East Coast last July. This time officials feared a storm matching Hugo, which killed 35 people in 1989. They told more than 500,000 tourists and residents to flee. Some of those who did not were asked to disclose their next of kin.

At 8:15 p.m. EDT, the eye of the hurricane passed directly over Southport, N.C., just inland from Cape Fear. Ahead of the eye, winds blew at 115 mph and gusted to 120 mph. “It was blowing hard,” said Mayor Bill Crowe. “We were at the mercy of the Lord. . . . Then, all of a sudden, it got really calm.

“He spared us.”

Fran gave Southport a beating, nonetheless. “It sounds like hell hung over out there,” said Steve Robbins, a police dispatcher. “The trees and power lines are coming down, and there’s flooding in the streets.

“No one can go outside.

“Most of our residents are still in town, riding it out in their boarded-up homes,” Robbins said. “These are rednecks down here. They’re pretty tough.”

From Southport, the hurricane blew north past Kure Beach, N.C., a retirement community along the Atlantic Ocean. Wind and rain battered cottages and duplexes so heavily that the structures began sliding into the sea.

Glen Ivey, a city spokesman, said the damage affected a nine-block area. “We’re talking custom-built houses,” he said. “My home’s there, and I know it’s sustained some damage. . . .

“It’s kind of like being in a battle zone.”

The storm rolled farther north, along the Cape Fear River, to Wilmington, where top winds fell to 105 mph.

This was still enough, however, to batter the city far more severely than Bertha had, said Frank Blackley, a deputy fire marshal. “I wouldn’t say you get used to it,” Blackley declared, “but it’s interesting.”

Storm Surges

Storm surges at inland creeks caused flooding in several Wilmington neighborhoods. In one instance, Blackley said, a 300-pound propane tank was spotted floating past a row of houses.

Firefighters tried to pursue the tank and capture it to prevent an explosion. But the storm worsened, Blackley said, and they were forced to stay inside.

From Wilmington, the hurricane turned slightly northeast and squarely struck the town of Castle Hayne. At 11:30 p.m. EDT, volunteer Fire Chief Dominic Bianco reported that trees had fallen onto several homes.

Bianco also reported widespread flooding.

“We have a generator, but everything else is dark,” he said. “Pitch black. We’re still hanging in there. . . . We haven’t been able to get out[side] yet.”

By midnight, the eye of the hurricane had dissipated. Forecasters said Hurricane Fran would roll farther north until it wheezed out into a tropical storm that would reach as far inland as West Virginia.

Rain in West Virginia

It was expected to drop 5 to 10 inches of rain in the West Virginia hills and hollows.

In Calabash, N.C., not far from Cape Fear and near the North and South Carolina state line, 72-year-old Thomas Wynn snorted in disgust as most of his neighbors headed for high ground.

“They’re chicken,” Wynn said. “I’m staying put. . . .

“What’s the use of leaving?” he asked. “I’d just worry about things back home if I left.”

Wynn said he had filled his bathtub “so I can grab a bucket and use that to flush the toilet when the water supply goes.”

As he spoke, the lights went out in his small, wood-frame home.

“What the heck,” he said. “We’ve had some hurricanes here before. The wind’s blowing pretty good and it’s raining hard, but the house should ride this out.”

Wynn had served in the Navy during World War II, “everywhere from Murmansk to the Philippines.” His wife, Frances, who was staying put with him, had been in England during the blitz.

“We’ve been through worse than this,” he said.

Winds of 140 mph

Although Fran was less powerful than Hugo, which had winds of 135 mph, it was just as large. Fran sent hurricane-force winds of up to 140 mph from its eye.

In South Carolina, the advancing storm ripped the steeple off the Sandy Grove Baptist Church in Myrtle Beach, but there were no reports of injuries.

Myrtle Beach, about 60 miles from landfall, pulled its police and utility crews off the streets at the height of the storm. Residents were told by the local radio station that there was no point in calling about power outages because no one was available to make repairs.

Among those who fled was Andy Momtvai, 52, who headed a three-car caravan of Myrtle Beach residents who drove more than 100 miles inland to Columbia, S.C.

Momtvai, his girlfriend, Bennett Skews, 26, his son and several friends made it to Columbia by midafternoon and found rooms at a roadside motel. He headed straight to the bar, ordered a double Scotch and slumped at a table.

He owns several condominiums, two golf equipment shops and a restaurant in Myrtle Beach. Even a late-day news report that the hurricane seemed to be heading north of town did nothing to cheer him up.

“Even if it doesn’t come right up into my backyard, we’ll still get eight straight hours of hurricane-force winds,” he said, morosely dragging on a Marlboro. “It’s still going to kill me.”

Even if hurricane damage is minimal, Momtvai complained, it will take a solid month before tourists return to Myrtle Beach--and this “right in the middle of golf season.

“They might as well have dropped a cruise missile right on my place.”

‘It Looked Vicious’

Just this past July, Hurricane Bertha had swept near Myrtle Beach, dropping a pine tree on his restaurant. With $70,000 in damage, Momtvai was still trying to reopen--and had yet to be paid his insurance claim.

“Now this,” he said.

At 4 a.m. Thursday, Momtvai walked out on the beach near his home. He looked up and saw only a placid, inky horizon. At midmorning, he and Skews started packing their car. He finished boarding up his home and walked back out on the beach again.

The air was still quiet, but the serene darkness had been replaced by something ominous. There was not a sea gull in sight. The sky was beige, and the sea was boiling.

“It looked vicious,” he said. “Quiet and vicious. Just like it did for Hugo.”

In Georgetown, a community of 12,000 about 35 miles south of Myrtle Beach, a large number of homes and businesses were boarded up. Most residents had left early or were battened down safely inside as the winds mounted to hurricane force. By nightfall, streets were deserted.

Precautions appeared to be paying off. Although electrical power was out, many places had generators. Wind knocked down tree limbs, and vines littered yards and parking lots, but barricaded structures appeared to be holding up well.

One store, Georgetown Ice, did a brisk business selling ice, batteries and what owner Ginger Haley billed as “the world’s best hot dogs.”

Ralph Anthony Brown, 46, said Haley’s hot dogs were well worth an arduous trip to the store. “These are so good,” he said, “that I would come out in a hurricane for them.”

Minutes later, Brown left for home with some of life’s other necessities: two loaves of bread and a case of Budweiser.

John Fitch, a sergeant in the South Carolina National Guard, said he and 30 of his men from Lake City, a small town about 60 miles inland, had been summoned to help patrol Georgetown’s rain-lashed streets.

Fitch said he was told to “be careful, but come ASAP.”

One of Fitch’s men, Spec. 4 Patrick Harrell, said he had been called up for similar duty when Hugo hit.

Others who fled included Steve Drennon and his family.

A quality engineer for a diesel manufacturer, Drennon was in Indianapolis when Fran neared shore. He had promised his family that he would fly home to Charleston, S.C., and take them south to Atlanta, out of harm’s way.

The Drennons had lived through Hugo, and that experience was enough.

“I don’t think we could take all that tension again,” Drennon said. “All the walls creaking, the sound of the wind, and then, boom!”

Hugo sent one tall pine tree after another slamming down into the Drennons’ home, beside the Bush River. By the time the last one fell, they had caused $25,000 worth of damage to the roof and walls.

So this time he called from Indianapolis and told his wife, Debbie, to gather the family and get ready. He would fly back to Charleston and drive everyone to Atlanta.

But when he turned up at the Indianapolis airport, he was told that the Charleston airport was closed. Drennon booked himself into Columbia, S.C., via Charlotte. He called Debbie back and asked her to drive out of Charleston with his parents and the children and meet him at the Columbia airport.

He told her to bring large coolers for water and ice and several chain saws for fallen trees. Steve Drennon had raw memories of opportunists who drove through his neighborhood seven years ago, offering to sell $139 chain saws for $1,000 apiece.

“I’m not going to buy a thing from those vultures this time,” he said.

In his last call to his wife, she told him that she had videotaped their home “just so we know what it looked like,” Drennon said.

Now, aboard a jetliner descending through the clouds toward Columbia, Drennon tapped nervously on his briefcase and hoped that his family had made it out of Charleston before the roads became jammed.

He gathered his bags and was one of the first off the plane. He strode quickly through the airport until he saw his wife and their children, Abby, 7, and Steve Jr., 15, and his parents, Donald and Trudy Drennon, at a gate.

“You got here fast,” Steve Drennon said, hugging his wife. Then he whispered: “Thank God.”

“All right,” said his mother, after they all traded greetings, “everyone ready for Atlanta?”

School Offers Shelter

Florence, S.C., well south of where the hurricane came ashore, was still close enough to suffer buffeting winds and drenching rains that prompted about 400 residents to seek shelter at a local high school.

Many of them were poor and elderly--migrant workers from local tobacco fields and retired couples who had flimsy mobile homes. They sprawled on the floor of the high school gymnasium on air mattresses and blankets, making themselves as comfortable as they could.

Local businessmen donated free food and drink, and the Clyde Beatty Circus--due to open in town within a few days--provided a clown to amuse the children.

Walter G. Frederick, 75, and his wife, Bertha, were among the mobile home residents who went to the shelter.

“They said on TV to find someplace safe,” Frederick said. “I was here for Hugo, so they didn’t have to tell me twice.”

A mile south of the high school, welders John Johnson, 28, and Marshall Grims, 26, lounged on the porch of the brick home they share, flicking their smoldering cigarette ashes into the pounding, wind-swept rain.

“It rattles the house a bit, but it doesn’t scare us none,” said Grims. “This is chump change.”

On a local radio station, a disc jockey who calls himself “the Bird” played Brook Benton’s version of “A Rainy Night in Georgia.” The Bird warbled along for a while, changing the words to “a rainy night in the Carolinas.”

He listed the local school closings before signing off.

“You be careful,” he said. “Watch out for the storm and stay safe.”

Harrison, a Times staff writer, reported from Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Clary, a special correspondent, reported from Georgetown, S.C. Times staff writers Robert L. Jackson in Charlotte, N.C., Stephen Braun in Florence, S.C., and Eric Malnic, Jeff Leeds and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles, and researchers Edith Stanley in Atlanta, Anna Virtue in Miami and John Beckham in Chicago also contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Walls of Water

Most hurricane deaths occur from drowning. A violent drop in pressure in the eye of the storm has a “plunger” effect on the sea. It creates a “surge,” with walls of water radiating outward and flooding low coastal areas.