THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409230521
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN E. QUINONES MILLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
We knew it was coming - the National Weather Service predicted it all Wednesday, but we had no idea how strong it would be or how much damage it would do.
But the northeaster that hit Hampton Roads late Wednesday night did plenty.
It caused power failures throughout the area.
It caused eight barges being towed on the James River from Richmond to break from their tug boat and crash into the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel.
And it ripped a brick facade off an Oceanfront hotel.
But it could have been worse.
``This is not a bad storm,'' Robert Bottom, a spokesman for the National Weather Service in Norfolk, said Thursday. ``The tides are not flooding, the beaches are not eroding, and people did not have to evacuate. It may have caused some trouble, but it really is not a bad storm.''
Only a half-inch of rain fell in Norfolk, although some parts of Hampton Roads reported up to 3 inches.
Confirmed wind gusts reached 59 mph at one point, with reports well over 60 mph near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, according to Scott Stephens, also with the weather service in Norfolk.
Maybe the storm seemed worse to some people because it ruined the last day of summer. Autumn officially started at 2:19 a.m. today.
The weekend, however, will be a return to quieter weather.
``The sun should be out for both Saturday and Sunday with the high reaching the upper 70s and possibly 80 degrees,'' Stephens said.
The storm hit Hampton Roads around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday after traveling north up the coast from South Carolina, according to Bottom.
At first it was just heavy rain. Then, about 2 a.m. Thursday, winds started picking up, with gusts almost 30 mph.
About 5 a.m., wind gusts increased even more. A small tornado reportedly touched down on the North Carolina Outer Banks near Rodanthe at about that time, slightly injuring one woman, destroying a trailer and breaking windows in several homes.
About 7 a.m., the winds were strong enough to rip the brick facade from a four-story Oceanfront hotel in Virginia Beach.
Four vehicles were damaged by falling debris from the north side of the Tradewinds Resort Hotel, at 16th Street and Atlantic Avenue. No one was injured.
Len Stolder and his wife, Dawn, of Otego, N.Y., were loading their 1994 Buick Regal for departure about 7:05 a.m. as northeast winds whipped in from the ocean.
``I finally got my wife into the car when I heard this noise,'' he said. ``The first sheet (of bricks) took out the first three cars and I yelled for her to get out of the car.
``She was getting out when the second sheet came down. Fortunately she got down between the cars and I could see all this stuff flying around. She wasn't hurt. We were awfully, awfully lucky.''
John W. Thompson of Ravenswood, W.Va., lost a 1993 Chevrolet pickup truck to the falling bricks.
There were confirmed reports of wind as high as 59 mph around 8 a.m. - about the time the barges broke loose from the tug.
Virginia Power workers started working before dawn to get power restored to customers.
``We've had outages almost everywhere this morning,'' spokeswoman Patricia Gayle said Thursday. ``They started between 3:30 and 4 a.m. as the storm started moving through.''
Most of the power failures were caused by tree limbs, snapped by high winds, coming down on primary wires, Gayle said.
At 8:25 a.m. Virginia Power recorded loss of power to about 11,000 customers, but by 10:14 a.m. the number had dropped to 7,000. Virginia Beach and the Ocean View section of Norfolk were the hardest hit.
At nightfall, 3,200 customers were still without power, Virginia Power reported. MEMO: Staff writers Perry Parks and Bill Reed contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/Staff
At the Tradewinds Resort Hotel - at 16th and Atlantic on the
Oceanfront - four vehicles were damaged by debris falling from the
north side of the building. No one was injured.
KEYWORDS: STORMS BRIDGES BARGES by CNB