The Washington Post - 05.09.2019

A10 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019

urged residents to be off the

streets by 8 p.m. The city is no

stranger to hurricanes: Last Sep-

tember, slow-moving Florence

drenched the Wilmington area,

causing major flooding on the

Cape Fear River. Officials predict-

ed this storm won’t be as bad but

asked residents to take it s eriously.

Beach communities have been

under an evacuation order since 8

a.m. Wednesday. R esidents of low-

lying areas are urged, but not or-

dered, to move t o shelter on higher

ground. A storm surge of four to

seven feet i s expected.

Duke Energy, the largest utility

provider in the Southeast outside

of Florida, predicts 700,000 peo-

ple will have power outages in the

eastern Carolinas, some possibly

for several days, as Dorian ap-

proaches. The company said in a

news release t hat more than 9,

utility workers are in the C arolinas

to assist with p ower restoration.

To the south, in Charleston,

flooding also is likely. The region

has become more vulnerable be-

cause o f rising sea levels a nd coast-

al development. Since 1996, about

25 percent of the land and wet-

lands around the Church Creek

basin in West Ashley, a suburban

Charleston s ubdivision, have been

filled, according to Andrew Wun-

derley of Charleston Waterkeeper,

a nonprofit environmental watch-

dog g roup.

“When we think about flooding

and h urricanes, the threat to prop-

erty, life and people’s well-being is

obviously very important and top

of mind, but what gets overlooked

is the ecological damage,” he said.

“Floodwater is about the dirtiest

water you can conjure up, full of

oil a nd g rease, herbicides and pes-

ticides, bacteria and pathogens,

and all sorts of nastiness, and

when it drains away after the vis-

ceral event is over, it can still take

years for estuaries and waterways

to recover.”

Dorian’s p ath is near t he f ishing

grounds of commercial fisherman

Mark Marhefka. The more i ntense

the s torm, t he more d amage t o the

ocean f loor and marine habitat, he

said. “The f ish will either bunch up

and bite like crazy, or they’ll be all

stirred up and not want to bite,”

said Marhefka, o f Charleston.

If the electricity on shore is still

out, he’ll have to drag his genera-

tor along to power his electric

scale. “Got to be able to weigh the

catch a nd get the fish to my r estau-

rants,” h e said.

Bechir Slama, manager of the

IHOP restaurant in Bluffton, S.C.,

stayed open f or breakfast Wednes-

day but closed at 1 p.m. so his

employees could return h ome.

“They want to work,” he said.

“This is hurricane season; they

always make good money in the

hurricane season. Tips are always

better.”

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Sacchetti reported from aboard the

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Paul Clark in

the Atlantic Ocean, Craig from

Jacksonville, Achenbach from

Washington. Jasper Ward in Nassau,

Fenit Nirappil in Daytona Beach, Fla.,

Susan Cooper Eastman in

Jacksonville, Jessica Sparks in

Bluffton, S.C., Stephanie Hunt in

Charleston, S.C., Patricia Sullivan in

Wilmington, N.C., Reis Thebault in

Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Mark Berman,

Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner, Jason

Samenow, Andrew Freedman and

Matthew Cappucci in Washington

contributed to this report.

We dnesday morning. Few cars

were on the roads, and few busi-

nesses were open.

“To say we dodged a bullet from

the storm is an understatement,

obviously we dodged a missile,”

Volusia County Manager George

Recktenwald said.

Eileen Keenan, who chose to

stay in her house a block from the

beach, said her only complaint

was that the coffee shop near her

was closed f or the day.

“We can joke about it and be like

‘ugh,’ but you have to be grateful

that nothing happened and we

were not the Bahamas,” said

Keenan, 53. “Good god, help those

poor people.”

The Carolinas are now facing

their Dorian moment. Some loca-

tions could see as much as five to

eight f eet of storm-surge flooding,

which will come on top of already

unusually high t ides.

Randy Webster, head of the

Horry County Emergency Man-

agement agency in Myrtle Beach,

S.C., w as dismayed t hat only about

15 percent of residents complied

with an evacuation order for part

of the county.

“Your decision to stay and not

evacuate,” Webster said, “means

you may be by yourself for a very

long time.”

As the skies darkened Wednes-

day, Horry Sheriff Phillip Thomp-

son told those who stayed: “Be

calm, hunker down. We’ll get past

it; we’ve been h ere before.”

Officials in Wilmington, N.C.,

ing a red fish. “It’s high tide, and

the water is supposed to be com-

ing over, but all w e got is some rain

showers.”

“Man, my n eighbor is h ome cut-

ting his lawn right now,” added

Gary Williams, 66. “A nd if you go

to the other side of town, you can

probably find people having bar-

becues i n their front lawn.”

As dolphins fed in the river,

Williams and Owens said local

officials h ad o verreacted by order-

ing the evacuation of a quarter-

million residents in Jacksonville,

which has shown a propensity to

flood.

“They made t oo big a deal about

this storm, and they should have

known when it just stopped and

sat over t he B ahamas that it wasn’t

going to make it here to be any-

thing like Irma,” s aid Owens, refer-

ring to t he hurricane that inundat-

ed nearly 1,000 properties here in

2017.

Some residents in Jacksonville

Beach, a barrier island along the

Atlantic Ocean, also questioned

city leaders’ decision to order a

broad evacuation. But Jackson-

ville Mayor Lenny Curry (R)

strongly defended the move, not-

ing it takes 48 hours to successful-

ly evacuate s o many people.

“This is my third storm in four

years,” Curry said. “We know w hat

we are doing.”

In Daytona Beach, Fla., bridges

that had been shut down because

of high wind on Tuesday night

reopened earlier than expected

Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Dem-

ocrat.

During a hurricane briefing

with officials in the Oval Office on

Wednesday afternoon, Trump dis-

played what appeared to be a doc-

tored map of Hurricane Dorian’s

projected track as it approached

Florida. The map showed a white

line encircling t he a rea of D orian’s

most likely path — often called the

cone of uncertainty — but there

also was a mysterious black loop

that extended the track into Ala-

bama. Trump had been sharply

criticized on Sunday for a tweet in

which h e claimed, incorrectly, t hat

Alabama was among the states

that would be hit “harder than

anticipated” by the s torm.

As reporters pressed him for

answers later Wednesday, Trump

said he had been told there was a

“95 percent” probability that Ala-

bama would be hit by the hurri-

cane. He denied any knowledge of

whether anyone had d rawn on the

map, saying only: “I don’t know. I

don’t k now. I don’t k now.”

Alabama is safe, as is Florida,

now that Dorian has passed. As

the storm churned north of Flori-

da’s coast, it left many Sunshine

State residents grumbling about

the protracted inconvenience of a

week’s worth of often dire warn-

ings and mandatory evacuations.

“There ain’t nothing coming

this way,” said Jerome Owens, 57,

who was fishing in the St. John’s

River in Jacksonville, using a

croaker as bait in hopes of catch-

chain, and Great Abaco is the

third-most — “and a large portion

of the economy a s well.”

What happened to the northern

Bahamas was something even

worse than the worst-case sce-

nario. Never had a storm so pow-

erful become stationary for so

long over an inhabited place.

Dorian’s murderous 40-hour stall

over Grand Bahama on Sunday

and Monday is something weath-

er experts had not seen.

“Grand Bahama Island may

have just endured the longest

siege o f violent, destructive weath-

er ever observed,” reported The

Washington Post’s Capital Weath-

er Gang. By comparison, Hurri-

cane Michael, which r ipped u p the

Florida Panhandle town of M exico

Beach in October, was a fast-mov-

ing storm in which the wind and

16-foot storm surge did their dam-

age over a couple of hours. Dorian

was stronger, with a storm surge

possibly a s high a s 23 feet — and i t

barely b udged for a day and a half.

The White House said Presi-

dent Trump spoke Wednesday

with Prime Minister Hubert Min-

nis of the Bahamas, offering con-

dolences and promising support

in the disaster r esponse.

On Tuesday night, t he p resident

tweeted that he was signing an

emergency declaration for North

Carolina at the request of Sen.

Thom Tillis (N.C.), whom Trump i s

supporting in the Republican pri-

mary there. But the declaration

was actually requested by North

ies s uch as Savannah, Ga., Charles-
ton and Myrtle Beach in South
Carolina, and Wilmington, just
over the North Carolina b order.
What’s certain is that Dorian is
now a more moderate version of
the storm that hit the northwest
Bahamas o n Sunday.
A storm surge as high as a two-
story building, with waves on top
of that, effectively obliterated the
city of Marsh Harbour on Great
Abaco.
“A n absolute catastrophe.
SEND HELP TO ABACO IS-
LANDS,” tweeted storm chaser
Josh Morgerman after riding out
the storm in Marsh Harbour,
where he said the winds pounded
his concrete building “with the
force of a thousand sledgeham-
mers.”
Family members have gathered
at the helicopter terminal of Nas-
sau’s international airport await-
ing evacuees f rom the A bacos. Ral-
anda McKinney, a 25-year-old
Abacos transplant living in Nas-
sau, was waiting for news of her
parents. Their neighbor, who was
evacuated with severe injuries,
told McKinney that he had seen
her parents at a shelter that was
running out o f food.
“I don’t c are about possessions,”
McKinney said. “I just want to see
their faces.”
Bahamians were becoming in-
creasingly frustrated w ith t he offi-
cial response. Rayven Bootle, 18,
was waiting for word from her
mother, grandmother and others
in the A bacos community of Treas-
ure Cay. She was frustrated that
the government was not letting
people in Nassau carry donated
relief s upplies t o the Abacos.
“It’s been days. Dorian is gone,”
she s aid. “Come o n, w e need t o get
in.”
The names of more than 5,
people have been posted on
DorianPeopleSearch.com, a site
set up to connect loved ones amid
the chaos. It’s unclear how many
are missing or just haven’t been
able to make contact.
U.S. Coast Guard officials pre-
paring to dock in Miami Beach on
Wednesday said they expected to
load up on plastic tarps for shel-
ters — one of the most in-demand
items in the Bahamas — before
delivering those and other sup-
plies t o Nassau on T hursday.
“This is not a short-term recov-
ery,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr.
Kristopher Ensley, captain of the
Paul Clark, one of nine cutters
ordered to the B ahamas. “ For now,
they need food, they need shelter,
they need m edical care.”
The Coast Guard was still field-
ing emergency rescue requests
from the Bahamian government;
people in the United States at-
tempting t o check on relatives and
friends should call the State De-
partment’s O ffice of Overseas Citi-
zens Services at 8 88-407-4747.
A major challenge for the cut-
ters is that the waters around the
islands are full of debris, sunken
bo ats and other hazards.
“You don’t really know what to
expect,” said Ardy Effendi, execu-
tive officer of the Paul Clark. “We
can’t just push through a lot of
debris.”
Theo Neilly, consul general for
the Bahamas in Washington, said
the scale of the destruction is un-
precedented.
“We have not seen a hurricane
of this kind in the country ever
before,” Neilly said. He noted that
Grand Bahama is the second-
most-populated island in the

DORIAN FROM A

hurricane dorian

Outer Banks in crosshairs as Bahamas reels from disaster

Storm-surge potential

1 foot 3 feet 6 feet Populated

places

Atlantic Ocean

Fore

cast^ track^ of^ Dorian

FLA

GEORGIA SOUTH CAROLINA

Jacksonville

Savannah Beaufort

Brunswick

Charleston Myrtle

Beach

2 a.m. Thursday

2 p.m. Thursday

North

50 MILES

TIM MEKO/THE WASHINGTON POST

Source: National Hurricane Center

BY MATTHEW CAPPUCCI

AND ANDREW FREEDMAN

On Wednesday, it appears the
White House attempted to retro-
actively justify a tweet that Presi-
dent Trump issued over the week-
end in which he warned, erro-
neously, that Alabama would be
affected by Hurricane Dorian.
In a White House video re-
leased Wednesday, Trump dis-
plays a modified National Hurri-
cane Center “cone of uncertainty”
forecast, dated 11 a.m. Aug. 29,
indicating Alabama would be af-
fected. The graphic appears to
have been altered to indicate a
risk the storm would move into
Alabama from Florida.
“We had, actually, our original
chart was that it was going to be
hit — hitting Florida directly,”
Trump said as he displayed the
graphic from Aug. 29, which now

includes an appendage extending

the cone into Alabama.

“That was the original chart,”

Trump said. “It could’ve, uh, was

going towards the Gulf,” Trump

explained in the video.

Asked about the altered hurri-

cane forecast chart at a White

House event Wednesday after-

noon, Trump said his briefings

included a “95 percent chance

probability” that Alabama would

be hit. When asked whether the

chart had been drawn on, Trump

said, “I don’t know; I don’t know.”

Trump’s tweet on Sunday came

as Dorian was hitting the Baha-

mas as a high-end Category 5

hurricane, and the tweet sparked

enough public alarm that it

prompted the National Weather

Service in Birmingham, Ala., to

bluntly tweet 20 minutes later:

“A labama will NOT see any im-

pacts from #Dorian.”

Photos posted on the White

House’s Flickr site reveal that

Trump did receive the correct

briefing on Aug. 29 from acting

National Oceanic and Atmos-

pheric Administration head Neil

Jacobs, in which the National

Hurricane Center’s forecast

called for Dorian to hit Florida.

Alabama was never included in

any National Hurricane Center

forecast cone for Dorian, al-

though it was included for a time

in a map on the probability of

tropical storm conditions. But

that showed a low likelihood of

that outcome.

It is not clear whether Trump

was responsible for altering the

forecast chart, but the modified

photo appeared to show Alabama

in Dorian’s eventual line of fire.

The National Hurricane Center’s

text bulletin had included Florida

in its discussion five times, but it

did not mention Alabama. In-

stead, the center urged caution

from residents in “the Bahamas,

Florida, and elsewhere in the

southeastern United States.”

When Trump tweeted his origi-

nal warning to Alabama, the con-

current National Hurricane Cen-

ter forecast called for Dorian to

pass off the Georgia coast, with

the center of Dorian’s expected

track passing 300 miles east of

the Alabama border. The far west-

ern extent of the cone was located

more than 150 miles east of the

Alabama border.

NOAA did not immediately re-

turn a request for a statement

about the altered forecast map,

which has the agency’s official

logo.

The White House did not re-

spond to requests for comment

for this report.

In a Wednesday evening tweet,

Trump defended his Alabama

warning and use of the altered

map by pointing to raw computer

model data provided to state and

local governments on Aug. 28, a

day before his storm briefing with

NOAA and four days before his

Alabama tweet.

The data show the majority of

models called for Hurricane

Dorian to make landfall well

southeast of Alabama, most likely

in Florida. By the time of his tweet

on Sunday, the projections on

that map showing potential im-

pacts on Alabama had long been

ruled out.

Altering official government

weather forecasts isn’t just a

cause for concern — it’s illegal.

Per 18 U.S. Code 2074, which

addresses false weather reports,

“Whoever knowingly issues or

publishes any counterfeit weath-

er forecast or warning of weather

conditions falsely representing

such forecast or warning to have

been issued or published by the

Weather Bureau, United States

Signal Service, or other branch of

the Government service, shall be

fined under this title or impris-

oned not more than ninety days,

or both.”

That l aw a pplies to what is now

known as NOAA’s National

Weather Service, which contains

the National Hurricane Center.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Trump displays what appears to be an altered map showing risk to Alabama

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

In a video released Wednesday, President Trump displays an out-of-

date National Hurricane Center map that included an addition to

the cone of uncertainty that extended it into Alabama.

Video comes days after

tweet about Dorian that

caused public alarm

RAMON ESPINOSA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ABOVE: Clothes were laid out to dry in Freeport, Bahamas, on Wednesday. U.S. Coast Guard officials said they were loading up on tarps

for shelters before taking supplies to Nassau on Thursday. BELOW: The storm eroded beaches and scattered debris in St. Augustine, Fla.

MARIA ALEJANDRA CARDONA/REUTERS