PENSACOLA, Fla. – Rather than roll the dice on where 160-mph Hurricane Ivan might strike, Gulf Coast residents from Florida’s Panhandle all the way to the bayous of Louisiana spent Monday boarding up their houses, tying up their boats and making plans to evacuate.
“I’m getting the hell out of here. This thing’s too big,” charter boat captain Jerry Weber said as he steered his 41-foot vessel up the Apalachicola River out of harm’s way. “It doesn’t matter where it comes ashore, not at this size.”
Emergency officials in several Panhandle counties began issuing evacuation orders Monday for all those living in mobile homes, barrier islands and storm surge areas. In Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, that order affects 130,000 homes. Earlier, military bases in the region flew out some 275 aircraft, and oil and natural gas companies began evacuating hundreds of workers from offshore rigs.
In New Orleans, a city largely below sea level and extremely vulnerable to hurricanes, Mayor Ray Nagin urged anyone who could leave to get out as soon as possible. The city and its environs are home to about 1 million people.
“It’s my feeling that this storm will pass very close to New Orleans,” Nagin said Monday night.
Although some forecasters predicted some weakening over the cooler waters of the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield said the Category 5 storm would still be “very formidable.”
“It’s going to hit somebody,” he warned. “This is a very, very dangerous hurricane.”
At times along its wobbly path, forecasters had predicted Ivan could make direct hits on either the Florida Keys or populous South Florida, only to see it veer west and sidestep both areas.
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama residents had thought they were in the clear, until Ivan shifted over the weekend and put them in the possible path.
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