Tourists leave islands as Earl nears

2010-09-01 17:09

Raleigh – Powerful Hurricane Earl wheeled toward the East Coast, driving tourists on Wednesday from North Carolina vacation islands and threatening damaging winds and waves up the Atlantic coast.

Visitors were taking ferries off Ocracoke Island and told to leave neighbouring Cape Hatteras in North Carolina's Outer Banks, and federal authorities have warned people all along the Eastern seaboard to be prepared to evacuate.

Emergency officials as far north as Maine were checking their equipment and urging people to have disaster plans and supplies ready.

Earl was still more than 1 125km south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, with top sustained winds of 200km/h. It was on track to near the North Carolina shore late on Thursday or early on Friday and then blow north off the coast, with forecasters cautioning that it was still too early to tell how close the storm may come to land.

The storm was approaching at the start of a long weekend before the US Labour Day holiday on Monday.

Hurricane watches were out from Surf City, North Carolina, to Virginia's Parramore Island. Not since Hurricane Bob in 1991 has such a powerful storm had such a large swath of the East Coast in its sights, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesperson for the National Hurricane Centre.

Slight shift

"A slight shift of that track to the west is going to impact a great deal of real estate with potential hurricane-force winds," Feltgen said.

If Earl brings rain farther inland, it could affect the US Open tennis tournament, being played now through September 12 in New York City. "We're keeping our eye on it very closely," said United States Tennis Association spokesperson Chris Widmaier.

Even if Earl stays well offshore, it will kick up rough surf and dangerous rip currents up and down the East Coast through the Labour Day weekend, a prime time for beach vacations, forecasters said.

The only evacuation orders so far affected parts of North Carolina's Outer Banks, thin strips of beach and land that face the open Atlantic.

Tourist cars, some with campers in tow, lined up for the first ferries of the day from Ocracoke to the mainland. Another car ferry connects to Hatteras, which has a bridge to the mainland and came under the second evacuation order a little later on Wednesday morning.

The evacuation orders are called mandatory, but Julia Jarema, spokesperson for the state Division of Emergency Management, said it doesn't mean people will be forced from their homes.

Door-to-door

Local law enforcement officials may do something such as going door-to-door and asking people who stay behind for their information about their next of kin.

Emergency officials said they hoped Ocracoke's 800 or so year-round residents would heed the call to leave. But Carol Paul said she and husband Tom would stay put if the current forecasts hold. Only a direct hit from a stronger storm would drive them from the island where they've lived for seven years, running an antiques store.

"There's never been a death on Ocracoke from a hurricane, so we feel pretty comfortable," Carol Paul 57, said as tourists departed on ferries and her husband, also a construction contractor, worked to board up the windows of clients and friends' homes.

"Everything here is made pretty much with hurricanes in mind."

The approaching storm troubled many East Coast beach towns that had hoped to capitalise on the BP oil spill and draw visitors who normally vacation on the Gulf Coast.

On Tuesday, gusty winds from Earl's outer fringes whipped palm fronds and whistled through doors in the Turks and Caicos Islands as tied-down boats seesawed on white-crested surf. Islanders gathered to watch big waves pound a Grand Turk shore as the wind sent sand and salt spray flying.

- AP