Eleven deaths now blamed on storm

Web-posted Sept. 6, 1996 at 12 p.m.

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The Associated Press

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) - A weakened Hurricane Fran turned into a tropical storm today after submerging beach towns, ripping steeples off churches and snapping trees like sticks in its terrorizing path through the Carolinas. At least 12 people were killed.

The storm hit Cape Fear with top winds of 115 mph Thursday evening, tearing up eastern North Carolina, then swamping central Virginia, leaving more than a million customers without power along the way.

"It's whipping like crazy," said Annie Scott, 52. "It's terrible. Tree limbs are down across the road and almost across my car."

By daybreak, Fran was moving over Virginia as a tropical storm, still packing top winds of 55 mph and dumping heavy rain.

The National Weather Service said the storm could dump up to 10 inches on the mountainous watersheds of already flooded creeks and rivers in Virginia, and the James River alone could reach 15 feet above flood stage.

At 8 a.m., the storm's center was about 20 miles north-northeast of Danville, Va. It was moving north-northwest at 17 mph and weakening.

The Shenandoah National Park closed Skyline Drive in Virginia and evacuated visitors. More than a half-million tourists and residents had been ordered to evacuate the coast in North and South Carolina, leaving a string of deserted beach towns. More than 9,000 people packed shelters overnight, and many thousands booked up hotels across the Carolinas.

"I'm just happy to be here and to be able to bring my children," said Barbara Mosley, 49, who left her Wilmington home for a Red Cross shelter.

Twelve of those who stayed behind were killed, including a firefighter in Durham when a tree fell on a firetruck, said Tom Hegele, spokesman for the state's emergency response team. The others included a woman whose trailer was hit by a tree, a 13-year-old boy whose house was hit by a tree, another person who slid off a flooded road and two men whose truck hit a downed tree.

Others who tried to stick it out panicked as Fran kicked in.

In Carolina Beach, the entire town was under water up to 8 feet deep when people in The Breakers condominium called 911 saying the building was collapsing.

Fran's top winds soon dropped to 100 mph, but the storm still caused damage on its way north, spinning off tornadoes and pushing a storm surge of up to 12 feet over beaches already washed out by Hurricane Bertha in July.

"Cars were floating by and hitting the building," said David Paynter, a spokesman for New Hanover County.

Paynter didn't think the condo residents were in immediate danger, but it was impossible for rescuers to reach them safely.

The damage reports came in long before the light of day: a marina with 20 boats washed away in Shallotte Pointe, ocean piers that survived Bertha disappeared in the surf, and in Surf City, a tornado rocked a bridge, as power lines hit each other and exploded in the wind.

"It is pounding and pounding and pounding," said Mary Wasson as Fran passed over Wilmington, where she rode out the storm with her daughter in a house that narrowly missed being hit by a sycamore tree.

The wind blew steeples off churches in Wilmington and in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and ripped the dome off the Duplin County Courthouse in Kenansville, about 75 miles inland. One shelter, in Cockowinity, lost part of its roof as more than 100 evacuees huddled inside. No injuries were reported.

"We took the full brunt," said Wilmington police Chief R.W. Simpson. "It was by far the worst one I've ever experienced."

Hurricane force winds blew in the city from 4 p.m. until midnight. "It was a long, continual battering," Simpson said.

North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt asked all nonessential state workers to stay home today, especially in the eastern part of the state.

"This is devastation like we have never seen," Hunt told ABC's "Good Morning America" today. "Light is just coming on us. We don't know what we're going to find, but I know we're going to find terrible, terrible damage."

Police this morning turned people away from bridges over the Intracoastal Waterway leading to Holden Beach and other nearby areas until the damage could be assessed.

There were more than a million customers without power in North Carolina, and in Virginia, more than 330,000 were dark. About 45,000 were still without power in South Carolina this morning.

The hurricane knocked out electricity to more than a million customers in the Carolinas and Virginia, including most of the eastern half of North Carolina and central Virginia.

In the port city of Wilmington, the only light came from headlights left blinking by wind-triggered car alarms, flashlights used to scan damage and generator-revived indoor lights.

"It's just a little scary with the wind blowing and the dark. Our shingles are blowing off the house," said Anne Seawell.

Downed trees, power outages and blocked roads and at least four tornados were reported in eastern and central Virginia. No injuries were reported.

More than 15 families were evacuated by boat along Fall Creek near Danville, Va., this morning when floodwaters surrounded their homes.

"Trees are coming down - high winds are just breaking them," Pittsylvania County emergency services manager Jim Davis said this morning during the storm's height.

Fran was expected to pass through Virginia, West Virginia, parts of Maryland and possibly Pennsylvania, bringing torrential rain and gusty winds, Mike Hopkins, a meteorologist with National Hurricane Center, said today.

Ms. Seawell, in Wilmington, said she was confident her home would survive the storm, but she said the stream of hurricanes - Bertha and Edouard last week - was wearing her down.

"I won't continue living down here if they keep coming in every month," she said.