As Hurricane Ophelia churned off the North Carolina coast, Steve King grudgingly agreed to miss watching football on television to go down to the marina and move his sea kayak out of harm’s way.
As he and his brother-in-law hoisted the kayak on to his Jeep, King said the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was on his mind, though it was too early to panic about this new storm.
”They keep saying this storm is two or three days out,” he said. ”I think we’re all waiting for something to happen.”
Ophelia was more than 320km from land with sustained wind of 121kph early on Monday, but it was piling up heavy surf that pounded the beaches. A tropical-storm warning was issued on Sunday evening from Cape Lookout south to Edisto Beach, South Carolina, and a hurricane watch remained in effect for the same area.
Concerned about possible coastal flooding, Governor Mike Easley ordered 200 National Guard soldiers to report to staging centres in eastern North Carolina. The governor also ordered a mandatory evacuation of non-residents from fragile Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, reachable only by ferry.
At Wrightsville beach, lifeguards ordered swimmers out of the surf.
”They are saying they don’t want anyone to even touch the water,” said Kathy Carroll (37), of Wilmington. ”Now I know how a flounder feels. I was getting tossed all over the place.”
With a history of several destructive storms, New Hanover county has a well-rehearsed disaster plan. But Katrina, which had been a powerful category-four hurricane before it made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi, is on residents’ minds, even though Ophelia is only category one and has been waxing and waning in strength.
”If it was a category-four barrelling down here, I would get out if I had a chance,” Lee said. ”The structures just can’t take that kind of wind. We’re cautiously watching [Ophelia]. We’re not giving up until it’s north of us.”
By 9am GMT, Ophelia was centred 355km east-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, the National Hurricane Centre said. The storm was moving toward the west near 5kph, and a gradual turn toward the north-west was expected on Monday, forecasters said.
The storm has followed a wandering course since it became a tropical storm on Wednesday off the coast of Florida.
Ophelia is the seventh hurricane in this year’s busy Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1 and ends on November 30. Peak storm activity typically occurs from the end of August until mid-September. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writer Estes Thompson contributed to this report from Raleigh