Tropical Storm Fay threatens Gulf cities

Officials were handing out sandbags in an area of New Orleans.

Associated Press

APALACHICOLA, Fla. — Fay just won’t quit.

The tropical storm that set a record with four landfalls in Florida chugged west across the Gulf Coast on Saturday, and cities from Pensacola to New Orleans prepared for several inches of rain.

Proving that a slow-moving tropical storm can be as deadly and damaging as a hurricane, Fay killed at least 11 people in Florida and one in Georgia, emergency officials said.

Thousands of homes and businesses were inundated with floodwaters this week as the storm worked its way north from its first landfall in the Florida Keys and zigzagged across the peninsula.

Fay’s center made its fourth landfall around 1 a.m. EDT Saturday about 15 miles north-northeast of Apalachicola, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Rains and strong wind gusts blitzed Tallahassee, the state capital, for more than 24 hours, knocking down trees and power lines and cutting electricity to more than 12,000 customers, city officials said.

On Saturday evening, they asked residents to reduce their water use for the next 24 hours because heavy rains were causing local ponds and storm water ditches to overflow into the wastewater collection system.

At 5 p.m. EDT, the storm’s center was about 55 miles east of Pensacola and 105 miles east of Mobile, Ala., and was moving west about 7 mph. Forecasters said they expected Fay to remain a tropical storm through Saturday and weaken the longer it remained over land.

Warnings and watches west of the Alabama-Mississippi border were discontinued, but a tropical storm warning remained for the northeastern Gulf Coast from Suwanee River, Fla., west to the Alabama-Mississippi border.

The U.S. Coast Guard in Mobile, Ala., closed numerous ports and waterways between Panama City in Florida and the Alabama coast to the east earlier Saturday.

In southern Georgia, Fay’s winds toppled trees and utility poles and ripped small pieces off some homes near the Florida border.

In southwest Georgia, officials said a boy drowned Saturday while playing in a drainage ditch swollen by 10 to 12 inches of rain.

Farther south, as winds picked up and skies darkened along Pensacola Beach, Alex Davis took his morning jog. The longtime beach resident said he wasn’t too worried.

“I doubt we’ll see any flooding out here. The wind is starting to sting a little, but that’s about it,” he said.

But emergency officials in low-lying cities in Fay’s path weren’t taking any chances.

In Alabama, officials opened shelters in the coastal counties of Mobile and Baldwin for residents of low-lying areas who did not feel they could safely stay in their homes. Trucks capable of rescuing people from floodwaters were also in place, said Yasamie Richardson, spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

In the New Orleans area, which is approaching the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, forecasts called for 1 to 3 inches of rain on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. In St. Bernard Parish, site of some of the worst post-Katrina flooding, emergency officials were handing out sandbags Saturday.

City officials in Slidell, La., where forecasters predicted 3 to 5 inches of rain could fall late today and through Monday, said emergency vehicles had been fueled and workers were on call.