Hello, My Name is Hurricane Ivan

[The Mad Monk]

Wow...that died quick.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Ivan Hits Atlanta!

Son of a *****! I got out of class at 5:15 to find rain coming down in buckets. A 5 mile drive home turned into a half-hour nightmare. And I had to turn the A/C off (to unfog the winshield) so that driving through massive puddles wouldn't kill my car's battery.

Yikes! I hope work and school are canceled tomorrow (I think they should be).

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Wow...that died quick.

sustained winds maybe but not flooding and Tornados

[PLATO]

Raining in Middle Tennessee. Wind a little gusty, but nothing serious. Looks like Ivan has lost his punch by the time he got here.

[chequita guevara]

Well, consider that unlike Frances, when Ivan came ashore, half of it still wasn't over warm water feeding the storm.

[Grandpa Troll]

Che

Lets hope Jeanne stays on current course for the longer it does the less time over water to strengthen


man this has been a tough year

[smacksim]

Ivan's Track now has it circling to death right over western north carolina. Big winds and rain here all day already. Ivan got really large by landfall. The flooding here from Frances caused water contamination for a week. That's how saturated the mountains are already. It's going to be bad here, flooding wise. I sure hope those tornados calm down.

I couldn't believe how big the thing was at landfall. We got rain from Ivan 1 hour after landfall. This is North Carolina! It was the size of the whole SE, as far as wind and rain go.

Jeanne weakened to a Trop Storm over Hispaniola, but will strengthen again as it goes on tour through the Bahamas. I don't see how it's going to steer to the coast. Very likely it's heading out to sea. Jeanne doesn't need a mission, that's what we have Trop Depression 12 for

[chequita guevara]

Trop Dep 12 (soon to be Karl) ain't heading our way. Jeanne is, I think. But she's just a little baby hurricane. All she's gonna do is flood us out.

[Theben]

Hmmm... isn't SpencerH from Birmingham, AL? Anyone seen him recently?

[Dis]

any word on pascagoula (MS)? I used to live there for about 1 year. There is a naval base on a small island accross from the shipyard. I worked at the SIMA (Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity) building. That building was made of aluminum- as were most buildings on that base. Pascagoula was about 30 miles from Mobile, AL iirc. I went a couple of times with the guys to some strip clubs outside Mobile. Can't say I know anyone there now though. Anyone I have know is surely stationed somewhere else by now.

[chequita guevara]

Pensicola was smashed.

[The Mad Monk]

Posted on Thu, Sep. 16, 2004





Man rides out Ivan in fortress-like house on Pensacola Beach

Associated Press


PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. - Mark Sigler was probably one of the few people who could sleep soundly with Hurricane Ivan's battering waves, 130-mph winds and flying debris slamming into his house.

Ivan was the first test for his Dome of a Home on the Gulf of Mexico, a veritable fortress built to withstand winds up to 200 mph.

"I was afraid at first when the storm started whether it was going to work or not," he said.

But his fear didn't last long. The house is made of a single slab of steel-reinforced concrete shaped like a dome and is covered by waterproof foam. It weighs about 850 tons, compared to about 25 tons for a normal house, Sigler said.

"You have a one-piece concrete house with five miles of steel in it," he said. "The house did exactly what it's supposed to do."

The Gulf's water washed neighboring houses out to sea, but caused little damage to his.

"We could hear pieces of the other houses breaking up and smashing into the house," he said.

He spent years planning to construct what he calls a hurricane-proof building after seeing his previous house severely damaged by Hurricane Opal in 1995. He found that the dome shape was stronger architecturally and got a federal grant to help with construction, which was finished 14 months ago.

The house looks like the cross section of an egg. Two breakaway staircases led up to the entrances, but they ripped away as they were designed when Ivan's force became too strong.

An NBC television news crew rode Ivan out in the house with Sigler to beam live feeds for broadcast. Sigler hoped the national attention would promote his building style, but the excitement wasn't enough to keep him awake.

"I went to sleep about 11, and I just woke up," he said at dawn.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9679572.htm?1c

[chequita guevara]

Dang, no picture.

[The Mad Monk]

Pensacola in pieces

Ivan rips up Panhandle; 20 die in U.S.

FROM STAFFAND WIRE REPORTS





PENSACOLA -- Hurricane Ivan drilled the Gulf Coast on Thursday with 130-mph winds that inflicted far less damage than feared everywhere except the Panhandle, where residents were left with surge-ravaged beachfronts, flooded streets and homes ripped apart by deadly tornadoes.

The storm was blamed for at least 20 U.S. deaths, most of them in Florida.

"We were prepared for the hurricane, but the tornadoes were bam, bam, bam," said Glenda Nichols, manager of the Microtel Inn in Marianna. "There was nothing we could do about it. I put all my guests in their rooms and told them to get in the bathtubs."

Ivan quickly deteriorated to a tropical storm after coming ashore. But forecasters warned it was not done yet: It threatened up to 15 inches of rain and flooding across the South, already soggy after Hurricanes Charley and Frances over the past month.

More than 2 million residents along a 300-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast cleared out as Ivan, a former 165-mph monster that killed 70 people in the Caribbean, closed in on an unsteady path.

Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores Beach, Ala., about 3 a.m., but it was the Panhandle -- squarely in the northeast quadrant of the storm, where the winds are most violent -- that took the brunt.

Ivan spun off at least a dozen tornadoes in Florida, while creating a storm surge of 10 to 16 feet, topped by large battering waves. A portion of a bridge on Interstate 10, the major east-west highway through the Panhandle, was washed away.

Insurance experts put the storm's damage at anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion.

The death toll included 13 in Florida, two in Mississippi, and one in Georgia. In Louisiana, four evacuees died after being taken from their storm-threatened homes to safer parts of the state.

Many of the millions of Gulf Coast residents who spent a frightening night in shelters and boarded-up homes emerged to find Ivan was not the catastrophe many feared.

New Orleans, especially vulnerable to storms because much of it lies below sea level, got only some blustery winds, a mere two-tenths of an inch of rain and only some downed tree limbs. By Thursday morning, French Quarter tourists came out of their hotels to sip cafe au lait under brilliant sunshine. "Leaves in the pool -- that's it," said Shane Eschete, assistant general manager of the Inn on Bourbon Street.

Mobile, Ala., a port city of 200,000 that had been in the bull's-eye of the storm, got a break by an 11th-hour shift to the east. Still, its historic oak-tree-lined Government Street was blocked with tree limbs, metal signs, roofing material and other storm debris. The storm turned the night sky an eerie green with popping electrical transformers. President Bush plans to visit Alabama and Florida to survey the damage on Sunday, the White House said. Tornado warnings were issued across northeast Florida again Thursday, even as search-and-rescue teams were sent to check the rubble for any victims of the night-before twisters. "It's sad," said a weary Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "I don't know quite why we've had this run of storms. You just have to accept that." Hundreds of thousands of people were without power, including 90 percent of Gulf Power Co.'s customers in Florida. "It's catastrophic. The electric system it has taken us 80 years to build was basically destroyed in eight hours," spokesman John Hutchinson said, adding that it could take three weeks to restore power. In the Panhandle, destruction was seemingly around every corner.

Soon after the sun emerged, so did residents who spent the night hiding from the storm. Donnice Tripp moved and spoke slowly as she surveyed what used to be her Belmont Street home.

Ivan tore off the roof, flipping it over a car parked next door, before folding in the four walls. Tripp, who has lived in the wooden house for 10 years, said she could not think when she first saw it.

"I was in shock," she said. "I just can't believe this. This building has been here since 1909."

Next door to her, a blue wooden home looked like a pile of painted matchsticks. Its 83-year-old occupant had been inside when Ivan's fury began to rip off the kitchen, said neighbor Lillie Crosby. The woman escaped to her car, where she rode out the storm until about 7 a.m., when she fled to Crosby's house.

Crosby's house only sustained a few "bumps and bruises" but the terrifying night is one she does not want to repeat, she said. "I won't stay for another one."

The destoryed bridges make it hard for Florida National Guardsmen and other rescuers to make their way to parts of the battered coast.

Search and rescue teams with cadaver dogs turned to boats and U.S. Coast Guard teams were tapped to reach some barrier island regions of the Gulf Coast late into the evening.

Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 National Guard troops were zig-zagging their way around washed out bridges and roadways to reach Pensacola, where they where to arrive late Thursday to start policing streets, clearing debris and delivering aid to the ravaged city.

"Help is on the way," Gov. Jeb Bush said, adding "it's been a long day" for victims as well as rescue workers trying to gain access to Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, two of the hardest hit my Ivan's 133 mph winds and up to 10-foot storm surge.

Strong winds kept much of Florida's air power grounded, and highways and bridges from Interstate 10 over Escambia Bay near Pensacola through U.S. 98 along the coastline south of Tallahassee were flooded out.

Hundreds of military vehicles trying to reach Pensacola had to drive around the washed out Escambia Bay bridge to the east and U.S. 90 west of town, forcing National Guard drivers to divert hundreds of miles around the devastation.

Bush said Pensacola was the worst hit by Ivan.

"The news is really heartbreaking."

Damage to barrier islands is extensive. Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission teams are conducting search and rescue missions on barrier islands by boat, but even those efforts are hampered by rough seas, Bush said.

"The wind damage and the storm surge in this storm, particularly in the Pensacola area, is brutal," Bush said. "And the barrier islands were damaged. Entire houses were taken off their foundations and disappeared because of the storm surge. That's pretty powerful." At various staging grounds, state and federal relief crews had hundreds of generators, 1,500 truckloads of ice, food and water waiting for clear roads.

Florida Adjutant General Douglas Burnett said most of the military's aircraft transported to respond to Ivan had been grounded by dangerous crosswinds Thursday. By the weekend, he said, Florida would have 36 UH-60 Blackhawks and 24 CH-47 Chinooks flying missions across the Panhandle.

"You can't be there too early because you put the crews and equipment at risk," Burnett said.

Damage was immense and spread across hundreds of miles, much in counties left virtually unreachable by land, officials said. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and over 340,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Panhandle.

More than 13,000 people were reported in temporary shelters as a result of all three hurricanes. American Red Cross had handed out 75,000 meals to Ivan victims.

Florida Transportation Secretary Jose Abreu said U.S. 90 could be re-opened in a couple days, but that I-10 over the bay would take "months, if not longer" to reopen. He said 13 bridge inspection crews with divers were already at work testing submerged bridge supports, but no definitive list of damaged bridges was available.

Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings said she expected Ivan to take a heavier toll than Charley or Frances, based on reports from local authorities.

"The physical damage is going to be worse," Jennings said.

Staff writers Paige St. John and Aaron Deslatte, The Associated Press and Gannett News Service contributed to this report.

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN0917IVANMAIN.htm

[The Mad Monk]

Dome Home:

http://www.monolithicdome.com/domenews/2004/ivan.html