It won't be easy to get thousands of people off Ocracoke Island, which is accessible only by boat. The 16-mile-long barrier island is home to about 800 year-round residents and a tourist population that swells into the thousands when vacationers rent rooms and cottages. Tourists were told to evacuate Wednesday. Island residents were told to get out on Thursday. Federal officials have warned Irene could cause flooding, power outages or worse all along the East Coast as far north as Maine, even if it stays offshore. The projected path has gradually shifted to the east, though Irene is still expected to make landfall as a major hurricane in North Carolina sometime over the weekend. It is then expected to continue trudging northward.
The state-run ferry service was scheduled to starts running Wednesday at 5 a.m., when the mandatory evacuation order starts. The ferry off the island would be free during the evacuation, but no reservations were allowed. Boats can carry no more than 50 vehicles at a time. "We expect them to be lining up before the first ferry for Hatteras before 5," ferry terminal worker Kim O'Neal said. "It'll be first come, first served." The island is part of North Carolina's Outer Banks, a roughly 200-mile stretch of fragile barrier islands off the state's coast. Pristine beaches and wild mustangs attract thousands of tourists each year. Aside from Ocracoke, the other islands are accessible by bridges to the mainland and ferries. The limited access can make the evacuation particularly tense.
All the barrier islands have the geographic weakness of jutting out into the Atlantic like the side-view mirror of a car, a location that's frequently been in the path of destructive storms over the decades. Many remember 1999's Hurricane Floyd, which made landfall as a Category 2 and caused a storm surge that wiped out scores of houses and other properties on the Outer Banks. As of early Wednesday morning, just hours before the first ferry was to leave, Irene was still nearly 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) south of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The Category 2 storm was starting to intensify again with maximum sustained winds of about 100 mph (155 kph).
It had already wrought destruction across the Caribbean, giving a glimpse of what the storm might bring to the Eastern Seaboard. In Puerto Rico, more than a million people were without power, and one woman died after trying to cross a swollen river in her car. At least hundreds were displaced by flooding in the Dominican Republic, forced to take refuge in schools and churches. Forecasters warned it could get worse: The storm was likely to strengthen into a Category 4 monster by the time it makes landfall in the U.S. this weekend. Irene could crawl up the coast Sunday toward the Northeast region, where residents aren't accustomed to such storms.
In U.S., First Evacuation Orders Go Out Ahead of Strengthening Hurricane Irene | CNSnews.com
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