Hurricane Georges Heads for Gulf Coast

As residents of the Florida Keys began to assess Hurricane Georges’ destructive legacy--and finding it worse than first thought--the marauding storm took on power Saturday while heading for yet another landfall along the Gulf Coast.

Top winds grew to 110 mph as the hurricane pulled away from Florida and headed northwest into the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

After hammering the Keys with winds as great as 100 mph through much of Friday, the hurricane is next expected to make landfall late today or Monday morning. The current forecast track takes the eye of the storm over the Gulf Coast somewhere between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.

In New Orleans, long considered by forecasters to be the U.S. big city most vulnerable to a powerful storm surge, residents began scurrying to get ready. Grocery stores were jammed with shoppers buying batteries, bottled water and extra food. Lines formed at hardware stores, where plywood to cover windows was in demand.

“This goes back to the old military cliche: ‘This is not a drill. This is the real thing,’ ” said Clyde Giordano, president of Plaquemines Parish, south of here.

“New Orleans is a real problem,” said National Hurricane Center director Jerry Jarrell. “It takes a long time to evacuate, plus it’s surrounded by water and levees.”

As many as 200,000 people were urged to flee barrier islands, flood-prone coastal areas and mobile homes after a hurricane warning was issued for a section of coastline from Morgan City, La., to the Florida Panhandle. Late Saturday, the storm was centered about 300 miles southeast of New Orleans, moving west-northwest at 10 mph.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered in nine coastal Louisiana parishes. New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial urged voluntary evacuations, warning that in a city that lies largely below sea level, water pumps would be overwhelmed by a storm surge of 15 feet or more.

People listened. Traffic was reported heavy on Interstate 10 across Lake Pontchartrain with motorists leaving the New Orleans area. Boat owners sought protected anchorages in inland marinas.

This area has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Camille struck in 1969.

“We were open until 2 a.m. last night, and we’ll stay open that late again tonight--as long as supplies hold out,” said Dwayne Robert, manager of a Home Depot in east New Orleans, where anxious residents were snatching up plastic sheeting, plywood and $200 generators almost as fast as trucks could bring them in.

Brennan’s, the famed French Quarter restaurant, announced it would not open tonight. Downtown hotels were testing their emergency generators and advising out-of-town guests to leave early today for the airport.

As news of the approaching storm spread, people’s thoughts seemed to turn to preparedness, but not panic. “There’s nothing you can really do about it,” said Judy Dixon, who was in an A&P; grocery near Xavier University. “We have been blessed in the past two years; a lot of hurricanes have passed us by. And I think this one will too.”

Georges is blamed for more than 300 deaths in the Caribbean, including about 180 in the Dominican Republic. No deaths were reported in Florida.

The hard-hit Lower Keys, from Key West to Marathon, remained under a nighttime curfew as National Guard troops, American Red Cross workers and power crews pulled in to assist those residents who rode out the storm.

Fifty miles of the Overseas Highway south of Marathon remained shut, stranding thousands of evacuees at Mile Mark 62. Traffic backed up for miles near Homestead, where Florida’s Turnpike ends, and again at a police roadblock set up in Florida City in front of the Last Chance Saloon.

Electric power to most of the Keys remained out and a boil-water order was in effect after holes appeared in the aqueduct.

In Key West, one of the hard-hit neighborhoods was Houseboat Row, a colorful collection of floating homes tethered to a sea wall on the east side of the island. Many were bashed to splinters, while others were left half underwater.

“Houseboat Row is just obliterated,” said Lt. Gov. Buddy McKay after touring the area. “That is kind of sad.”

A massive banyan tree was uprooted and toppled against the side of Ernest Hemingway’s former home, a handsome 1861 wooden house that is now a popular museum. While the lush vegetation on the grounds was shredded, the house itself was not damaged. In Marathon, many trees were knocked down, and streets were flooded. The Ocean Beach Club suffered extensive damage, according to spokesman Mark Stiles --”couple feet of sand inside, the fishing pier gone, the concrete dock broken up.”

The storm began its assault on heavily populated islands--Puerto Rico; Hispaniola, shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti; Cuba and then the Keys--after rumbling through the Leeward Islands on Sept. 20.

Forecasters feared that the storm could stall before reaching the Gulf Coast, a scenario that could result in rainfall totals over land of as much as 20 inches. “This is a very dangerous storm,” said James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., casinos were closed.

Forecasters were also keeping watch on three other hurricanes--Ivan, Jeanne and Karl--in the Atlantic, but none was considered an immediate threat to land.

Kolker reported from New Orleans, Clary from Miami.