
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 2, 1993                   TAG: 9309020187
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUXTON, N.C.                                LENGTH: Medium

AS HURRICANES GO, IT WASN'T BAD

After six days and the evacuations of tens of thousands of people, Hurricane Emily struck only a glancing blow to the Outer Banks before dashing off to the North Atlantic.

"We dodged a bullet," Gene Chiellini of the National Weather Service in New Jersey said Wednesday.

Evacuation orders were lifted from North Carolina to New York's Long Island and people returned to many Atlantic beaches. Surfers, often the last to leave in the face of a storm, dotted the waves once more.

Two men were swept out to sea Wednesday by a rip current under a fishing pier in Nags Head, while a third man man was rescued by a surfer.

Rescue workers called off the search for the missing swimmers after dark but planned to continue today.

On the New Jersey shore, lifeguards kept a close eye on bathers battling 3- to 10-foot waves and powerful riptides. Swimming was banned at some beaches in New Jersey and Maryland, and only wading was allowed elsewhere because of rough surf.

Many business owners spent Wednesday removing the tape and boards they had put over windows in preparation for the storm that didn't come.

"It's the normal thing you should do when the National Weather Service issues a hurricane warning for where you live and you live on a barrier island," carpenter Ronnie Powell said as he removed plywood from a store in Ocean City, Md. "It's much easier to do this and hope for the best."

But some villagers who rode out Emily's brush with the easternmost islands in the low-lying Outer Banks said the storm brought the worst flooding in decades.

The storm was sidetracked by upper atmosphere air currents and its eye missed Cape Hatteras by 20 miles. It spread heavy rain along the Virginia coast before it moved out to sea.

By midday today, Emily was expected to be about 240 miles south of Nova Scotia, and by midday Friday it should be about 350 miles south of Newfoundland, he said.

Emily's 115 mph wind, high tide and spin-off tornadoes left pockets of destruction. On the Outer Banks, sustained wind of 98 mph was measured at Buxton, near Cape Hatteras.

by CNB