Hurricane uncertainty has some Georgians stocking up, heading out

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Posted 1:24PM on Friday, September 3, 2004

TYBEE ISLAND - With Hurricane Frances too close and too powerful to ignore, coastal Georgians stocked up on supplies and booked inland hotel rooms while a few began heading out well ahead of the storm. "People who have moved here and never been through a hurricane, you see worry in their eyes," said Michael Hosti, owner of the Tybee Market supermarket, where customers have been steadily buying bottled water, batteries and lamp oil. "There's a bunch of concerned people." Gov. Sonny Perdue has ordered a pre-emptive state of emergency throughout Georgia. The 100-mile coastline Thursday remained a possible target for the Category 4 hurricane should it veer from its forecast path into south Florida. Coastal counties continued to watch Frances before deciding whether to order evacuations. County officials were expected to decide Friday. "Right now, there is no plan to evacuate," said Mark Crews, deputy emergency management director in Camden County near the Florida state line. "It's still too early to make a call." Pauline Clade of Whitmarsh Island east of Savannah went to Wal-Mart on Thursday to make sure she had water, food, toilet paper and dog food _ just in case. Her son had told her to be ready to leave Friday. "First they say it might hit, then they say it's not going to hit," said Clade, 86. "My golden lab retriever, she's scared right now. She knows something's happening. It makes me nervous." Traffic from the more than 1 million Florida residents told to evacuate began flowing into Georgia along Interstate 95 and I-75, though the Georgia Department of Transportation reported no serious congestion. But inland hotels throughout south Georgia were rapidly booking reservations. Hotels around Statesboro, 45 miles east of Savannah, were booked solid with Floridians and coastal Georgians trying to secure a room in case of an evacuation. "Everywhere in Statesboro I've checked, it's just full," said Dustin Rodgers, assistant manager of the Holiday Inn Express in Statesboro. "We're turning people away by the dozens." Rodgers said he had reserved rooms for people from as far south as West Palm Beach, Fla., and he'd already checked in a couple from Savannah who decided to get out early. State officials were collecting lists of hotels with rooms still available and posting them at visitor information centers along the interstates for travelers fleeing Frances, said Patricia Taylor, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism. On Tybee Island, where 3,390 Georgians live in funky beach bungalows and $500,000 homes on stilts, many expect the worst Frances will do is ruin the Labor Day weekend that's normally the island's last tourism bonanza of the year. But one owner of a rental condominium near the beach boarded its windows this week. "He said nobody else is probably going to do it, but he didn't want to be in a situation of coming back if an evacuation was ordered," said Ann Gay of Tybee Beach Rentals, which rents the condo for its owner. No major hurricane has hit the Georgia coast since 1898, and longtime Tybee residents like supermarket owner Hosti don't see Frances ending that streak. But Mayor Walter Parker says Tybee residents sounding more cautions with Frances. "Some people yesterday saw me stocking up on water at Wal-Mart and said, `Oh, this must mean something,'" Parker said. "And I said, `No, you just need to be prepared.' I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and praying."