Hurricane Ophelia lashed the North Carolina coast with high winds and heavy rains, beginning an anticipated two-day assault that threatened serious flooding and a 3,3m storm surge.
”If you have not heeded the warning before, let me be clear right now: Ophelia is a dangerous storm,” Governor Mike Easley said from Raleigh, appealing especially to those in flood-prone areas to evacuate.
Ophelia was moving so slowly — just 11kph on Wednesday night — that authorities expected the storm’s passage through North Carolina to take 48 hours from the start of rainfall on the south-eastern coast on Tuesday afternoon to the storm’s anticipated exit into the Atlantic late on Thursday.
The storm has sustained winds of 137kph, the National Hurricane Centre said. Hurricane warnings covered the entire North Carolina coast from the South Carolina line to Virginia, where a tropical-storm warning covered the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
More than 30,5cm of rain fell on Oak Island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, said meteorologist Jeff Orrock with the National Weather Service in Raleigh.
More than 120 000 homes and businesses were without power in eastern North Carolina, electric utilities said.
On Ocean Isle beach, south of Carolina beach, a 15m section of beachfront road was washed out by heavy surf and the only bridge to the island was closed.
Video broadcast by Durham’s WTVD-TV from Carteret county on the central coast showed a section from the end of a hotel’s fishing pier breaking off and floating away.
Jetnella Gibbs and her family made their way to a shelter at a Craven County High School after the rain started on Tuesday.
”We noticed the street was starting to fill up, and I said, ‘It’s time to go,”’ she said. ”I know if this little bit here has flooded the street, what will it do when it really pours?”
The storm’s eye was expected to brush the coast between midnight and 2am, but it might not come ashore, said Bob Frederick, meteorologist at the weather service bureau at Newport, North Carolina.
At 1am GMT on Thursday, the centre of Ophelia’s large eye remained about 56km south-west of Cape Lookout on the Outer Banks. Hurricane-force winds of at least 119kph extended 80km out from the centre and forecasters said some strengthening was possible.
Following the criticism of its response to Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had 250 workers on the ground — a larger-than-usual contingent given Ophelia’s size. Fema also put a military officer, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Brian Peterman, in place to command any federal response the storm might require.
The storm’s slow, meandering path to the coast gave Fema more time to get staff on the ground than is usually the case with North Carolina hurricanes, said Shelley Boone, the agency’s team leader for Ophelia.
President George Bush issued an emergency declaration for 37 counties in eastern North Carolina, authorising the Department of Homeland Security and Fema to coordinate disaster relief efforts.
Easley said he had spoken to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and that National Guard teams were prepared to evacuate sick, frail and elderly residents.
The Beaufort County town of Washington ordered an evacuation of a 20-block area that flooded during Hurricane Fran in 1996. A storm surge of up to 2,7m was forecast along the Pamlico River and water wasn’t expected to recede until Thursday morning, county manager Paul Spruill said.
Officials on the Outer Banks warned Ophelia could bring 10 hours of hurricane-force wind to exposed Hatteras Island. The southernmost villages of Hatteras, Frisco and Buxton were expected to get the worst of the winds and the flooding.
”It’s an island — the water will come over, it’ll go out — and we’ll do it all over again,” said lifelong Buxton resident Tiffany Bigham (27). ”You grow up knowing it’s a part of life.”
Ophelia is the 15th named storm and seventh named hurricane of this year’s busy Atlantic season, which ends on November 30. — Sapa-AP