THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508180163
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Hurricane Felix was a reluctant blind date. But if he had shown up, Chesapeake would have been ready.
Shelters were opened. Emergency phone lines were manned. Evacuations were recommended for some residents.
``We're going to sustain people through it all,'' said James L. Frye, principal of Indian River High School, one of 13 shelters set up Wednesday at city schools, stocked with food and staffed with volunteers to help ride out the storm.
City officials kicked into high gear Tuesday and didn't relax until Wednesday evening, when it appeared that Felix had changed his mind about visiting Hampton Roads.
As of Thursday at midday, Felix was demoted from a full-blown hurricane, with winds topping 75 miles per hour, to a tropical storm with less severe conditions.
That wasn't what weather forecasters expected.
Predictions that Felix would slam into the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Hampton Roads, perhaps even hovering over the area for a few days, sent about 65 Chesapeake residents to shelters. Oscar F. Smith High School got the most business, with 35 people who spent Wednesday night there.
``I feel like if we had continued on the way we were going for another six or eight hours,'' with Felix continuing to gain strength, said Thomas H. Cooke, a Fire Department battalion chief and the city's deputy emergency services coordinator, ``that number would have been much greater.
``We had a number of calls from people preparing to go to shelters, but it never got to that point,'' he said.
The shelters were closed Thursday at 10 a.m., although shelter workers were still on alert in case the storm took a turn for the worst.
The upside of the whole Felix scare, Cooke said, was that city officials got to practice using Chesapeake's emergency response plan. Felix showed some minor areas that need improvement, he said, but mostly things went smoothly.
The main concern now is whether the hurricane that wasn't will make residents less likely to heed future storm warnings or calls for evacuation.
``We don't want to get hit, but every time we have a near miss, it just adds to peoples' sense of complacency,'' Cooke said.
But Iris T. Matos, a Riverwalk resident who was among the first to arrive at the Oscar F. Smith High School shelter with her husband, David, and her 97-year-old mother America Arias, said she wouldn't take anything for granted, despite Felix' fickle journey.
``I've got everything packed, just in case anything else happens,'' Matos said. ``I wouldn't hesitate to go back again, because of her (Arias). If it were just me, I might be a little hesitant, but then again, you shouldn't take chances.'' MEMO: Staff writer Eric Feber contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
America Arias, left, came to the shelter at Oscar F. Smith High
School with her daughter Iris Matos.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FELIX by CNB