Huge Hurricane Floyd Churns Into Carolinas

Floyd, a monster hurricane, crawled up the Eastern Seaboard and was poised for a direct hit on the Carolinas early today, lashing the land and its people like a whip and forcing what officials called the largest evacuation in American history.

The storm pounded beaches, flattened trees, snapped power lines and smashed piers into driftwood. It flung rain sideways so hard that drops stung like hailstones. It filled creeks to overflowing, flooded shopping centers and spawned tornadoes. One destroyed a home near here and damaged two others.

The eye of the storm was expected to strike between Cape Fear, just south of here, and Cape Lookout, southeast of Morehead City, N.C., before daybreak, forecasters said. At 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Floyd was centered 100 miles south of the Carolinas and moving north at 18 mph. It had weakened but was still a Category 3 hurricane, with sustained winds of 115 mph. Most ominously, it was 520 miles wide.

One person was killed and another was presumed dead in North Carolina. The first died when a car hydroplaned on wet roads and crashed. The other was swept away by floodwater.

A tugboat sank 350 miles off the Florida coast, but it was not clear whether Floyd was the reason. The Navy and Coast Guard rescued its crew of eight from 30-foot seas. “Floyd did not help the situation,” said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer John Ware.

Authorities urged more than 2.6 million people to flee the East Coast. Evacuees choked highways and filled inland hotels to capacity. It was, Vice President Al Gore said, “the largest peacetime evacuation in the history of the U.S.” The closest rivals were retreats caused by other massive storms, such as Andrew in 1992 and Hugo in 1989.

President Clinton declared federal disaster areas in North and South Carolina. Beyond the Carolinas, Floyd aimed its wind and rain at Virginia, the District of Columbia, the mid-Atlantic states and New England as far north as Maine, where it was expected to clip Bangor with a 52 mph punch Saturday night.

Evacuations extended all the way to Fire Island in New York, where wind and surf were expected to halt ferry service.

The exodus in North Carolina started Wednesday, just after the morning rush hour. It began as a halting, lurching flow of cars, vans and pickup trucks that throbbed west and north, away from the sea, the wind and the unseen force of nature closing from the south.

All along Highway 132, the road that normally brings tourists into this seaside resort town of 60,000 all summer long, thousands of cars massed until they were reduced to inching forward in a slow-motion stampede.

People had been preparing for days, boarding their windows, nailing their storm shutters, hoarding food and supplies. It is rote here in the hurricane zone, well practiced in recent years. Since 1995, the eroding Carolina beaches have been hammered by five hurricanes--most recently Dennis just weeks ago.

But the approach of Floyd came like the jolt of a bad dream. As Wilmington’s year-round and summer populace awoke, they learned that Floyd was coming ashore not in Florida or deep in South Carolina but apparently close to home. As the day progressed, wind-driven rain rattled fiercely on their houses.

By 5 p.m. in Wilmington, wind gusting as high as 60 mph sent rain flying sideways. Even some of the hardiest of veteran storm die-hards lost their nerve and took to the road.

Under the dripping roof of a Texaco station, Angela Dupree, 26, and Tommy Tant, 29, cowered under the stinging rain. They had been there an hour, after fleeing their beach-side apartment. Somewhere, far off on the highway, Junior Dupree, Angela’s father, was coming for them.

They were headed for safety in Raleigh. The agonizing minutes and the worsening rain only convinced them that they were better off than waiting at the ocean’s edge.

“We made it through Fran,” Tant said of the hurricane that roared through Wilmington three years ago, causing $6 billion in damage. “But this seemed worse, so here we are.”

They also had survived Hurricane Dennis. Its winds and clattering rain seemed “no worse than this,” Dupree said, squinting through the mist.

They thought South Carolina would take the brunt of this storm, but when they awoke Wednesday morning and flipped on their TV, the news made them flinch like a static shock: Floyd was aimed right at them.

Belongings Placed High or in Duffel Bag

They bundled as many of their belongings as they could inside the apartment and put them up high, atop refrigerators, stoves, bureaus. They flung clothes into a duffel bag and a few tapes and food into a garbage bag. Dupree called her father--and now, three hours later, they were stranded.

“God, I hope he gets here soon,” Dupree said, eyeing traffic in the opposite direction.

“Come on, Junior,” Tant muttered.

A few miles down the road, Doug and Mark Pettit, a father and son who had fled north from their island home near the South Carolina line, were fidgeting and waiting for pizzas that they hoped would last them through the long, rocky night.

“I’ve had my fun with some of these babies, but this one don’t look like he’s playing,” said Doug Pettit, 55, a construction worker who had joined his son and his family as they fled Hogan Beach, a thin, exposed strip of an island south of Wilmington.

The Pettits had endured a long line of cars until they reached here and took shelter in a motel five miles inland from the threatened beaches. As he hefted a stack of pizzas from a storefront where chefs were nailing up plywood sheets for wind protection, Doug Pettit grumbled about his retreat from the sea.

As a boy of 11, Pettit had survived the wrath of Hurricane Hazel, the most fierce to blow through these parts. When Hazel roared through the Carolinas in October 1954, with winds estimated at 154 mph, it sheared off nearly every house on the islands along the state line. “Trees were blowing like grass,” Pettit recalled, “and cement culverts lifted right up out of the ground.”

Three years ago, when Fran downed thousands of pine trees and crushed hundreds of houses like cardboard boxes, Pettit “sat it out that night in my RV. All that wind did was rock me to sleep.” As for Hurricane Dennis, he snuffed, it “weren’t nothing.”

Perhaps the most anxious to leave were the tourists and retirees who only days earlier were basking on the beach under the late summer sun. A throng of visitors clustered around a ticket terminal at Wilmington International Airport, jockeying for seats on the last plane out.

Desperate to depart, San Franciscans Michael and Susan Schaeffer took turns cuddling their two young daughters and trying to score tickets for a noon flight. Michael Schaeffer bit at his nails. Susan barked into a cell phone.

Sara, 4, stared out through rain-streaked windows, while Samantha, 1, wailed.

“They said last night weather wasn’t a factor, there would be plenty of flights,” Michael Schaeffer said, scowling. “And now this. They say maybe it’ll get here, maybe not. Nobody knows anything.”

They rented a car, the last one available at the airport, for a frantic drive out in case there were no flights. Their bags were packed away, in a cargo hold somewhere, and they were anxious for news of the approaching hurricane. “Nobody knows anything,” Schaeffer said repeatedly to himself.

The couple, who work in executive positions for Pacific Gas & Electric, had been trying to reach Philadelphia to visit his parents. Now, with no plane in sight, they were praying for the arrival of a flight to Charleston, S.C.

“It’s got to get here,” Schaeffer said, shaking his head.”

Even when they were herded with other passengers to the gate, the Schaeffers could not be sure. One elderly woman approached a flight attendant and said she had seen a plane peek out of the gray gloom rolling overhead. The flight attendant shrugged, not hopeful.

But five minutes later, they heard a familiar whine from outside. The Schaeffers were already at the window when the gate agent made the announcement.

“We’re on,” Michael Schaeffer said as he shepherded his two girls toward the gateway. His wife sighed and smiled.

Hotels Full as Far Away as Tennessee

In South Carolina, a spokeswoman for the Spartanburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, had the sorry task of telling weary travelers that hotels were full as far away as Knoxville, Tenn. “People are still coming from the beach, and we have nowhere to put them,” said Diane Stephens, sounding worried. “All of the I-85 corridor from Charlotte to Atlanta is booked. Asheville is booked.”

She spoke to one couple who endured a 13-hour drive from Charleston, normally three hours away, only to be told that there were no rooms available for another 200 miles.

Stephens looked out a window. “You can tell that something’s coming,” she said, “and it ain’t good.”

At Myrtle Beach, S.C., one of the most popular tourist destinations on the Grand Strand, a 60-mile stretch of seaside towns, the streets were empty and beachfront hotels were vacant. Ten Red Cross shelters were filled to capacity.

“I still have people calling me to see if there are any more vacancies,” said Susan O’Leary, a volunteer who answered phones at one of the shelters, in the Carolina Forest Elementary School, where she normally teaches. “The closest shelter now is about 30 miles away.”

Some people at the shelter were playing cards. Others watched movies on a VCR. One of the women organized a scavenger hunt to entertain the children.

“We’re just sitting tight,” O’Leary said.

To the south, in Georgetown County, only two schools were far enough from flood zones to be used as shelters. Both were filled to capacity.

The lights flickered all morning at the shelter in Andrews Elementary School. At midafternoon, the power went out. Tim Conroy, the assistant principal, said 800 people huddled in the dark. Some fumbled for flashlights. Others stumbled down hallways looking for their families.

Fierce Winds Bent Trees in Half

Outside, the wind blew so hard it bent trees in half. The sound scared children. Rain pounded against the walls.

“The mood is anxious,” Conroy said. “I can see it in the eyes of the children. We’re in kind of an older building. The building is moaning and groaning. We’ve been here since yesterday, so the fatigue is starting to set in.

“And it’s really just beginning, isn’t it?”

To the north in New York City, officials prepared for 2 to 4 inches of rain, winds of 40 to 50 mph and heavy coastal flooding, expected to begin this afternoon.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announced an emergency plan calling for the opening of 20 shelters. Officials put extra buses on standby, mindful that flooding from Hurricane Dennis knocked out virtually all subways and commuter railroads during a soggy morning rush hour.

In the Bahamas, where the hurricane struck before heading toward the United States, entire islands and thousands of their residents had been cut off from the world, lacking power, water, telephones and sewage service, according to ham radio operators there and relatives who have restored contact with them.

Homes and condominiums were flooded with waist-high water in parts of Eleuthera, Abaco and other nearby islands and cays inhabited by Bahamians and well-to-do Americans and Europeans. Fallen power lines blocked major arteries.

At one Bahamian landing strip, all of which remained closed, a parked plane had flipped over in wind gusts.

But two full days after Floyd blew through, there were no confirmed deaths or serious injuries. And a reporter who flew over the worst-hit islands saw remarkably little catastrophic destruction.

Contributing to this story were staff writers Josh Getlin in New York, Mark Fineman in the Bahamas, Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles and researchers Lianne Hart and Nona Yates.

For updated reports on the progress of Hurricane Floyd, go to The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com

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Hurricane Floyd

Washington: Public schools ordered closed on today, preparing for major flooding.

Virginia: Governor declares state of emergency.

North Carolina: Storm surge of 15-17 feet expected.

South Carolina: Governor ordered entire coast, about 800,000 residents, to evacuate.

Georgia: Six coastal counties under mandatory evacuation orders. About 300,000 heeded orders.

Florida: More than 1 million evacuated homes, 100,000 without power, 40,000 in shelters.

Sources: AccuWeather, AP, National Hurricane Center