THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 7, 1996 TAG: 9609070194
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 94 lines
Fran's growl made for a restless night for many people in South Hampton Roads, but the region woke Friday to surprisingly little damage.
``It sounded like someone was trying to break in,'' said Chris Richardson, 27, of Virginia Beach after a near sleepless night with tree branches slamming against his home. ``I kinda guess that's what was happening. Fran wanted in.''
Yet the same storm that devastated Southeastern North Carolina was little more than a tree-trimmer in Southeastern Virginia.
Winds gusting to near hurricane force overnight snapped limbs and littered streets and yards with foliage. Some people had to hunt down their trash cans. A backyard tent went flying over a fence in the Sherry Park section of Virginia Beach.
But there was only a handful of reports of structural damage - most on the Peninsula.
Short-lived downpours soaked some areas and there were a few brief hail showers overnight. Rainfall was light along the coast with upwards of 4 inches inland.
At the the Ramada Plaza Resort Oceanfront hotel in Virginia Beach, a 50-by-50-foot chunk of the 17-story hotel's facade fell off the building's southeast corner around 11 p.m., exposing beams and insulation between the sixth and ninth floors.
In Portsmouth, two early morning fires - possibly caused by lightning from a storm spawned by Hurricane Fran - gutted one business and damaged another. No one was injured.
Firefighters were quickly able to control a blaze in the 800 block of Broad St. just after 3 a.m. at Barn Christmas & Crafts Shoppes. The damage to the business was minimal, thanks in part to a sprinkler system.
However, Boyd Diesel Sales & Service Inc., which sits behind Christmas Barn in the 800 block of Mt. Vernon Ave., was engulfed in flames that caused the roof to collapse. The building was condemned.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, but officials suspect it resulted from the same lightning strike the sparked the fire at the Christmas Barn.
In Newport News, high winds blew the roof off a metal storage shed and into a Virginia Power substation. It caused, in essence, a giant short circuit that left a large area without power. Among the customers affected was the Newport News Shipyard.
The shipyard sent a work crew to the substation to help remove the sheet metal, and Virginia Power technicians set about making repairs.
The utility kept crews busy through the night and the day repairing power lines damaged by falling limbs and trees.
At 7:49 a.m., South Hampton Roads, the Peninsula and Williamsburg had 135,120 customers without power. More than half the outages were on the Peninsula and in Williamsburg.
The high winds also made for some travel problems.
Just before 3 a.m., the Virginia Department of Transportation closed the Jamestown Scotland Ferry that runs between Jamestown and Surry County. Traffic was restricted on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
Fran gave the gift of a holiday to some students.
Closer to the hurricane's strength than the rest of South Hampton Roads, Suffolk school administrators Friday morning closed public schools and private Nansemond-Suffolk Academy.
The storm knocked power out at three of the public schools, and several school buildings suffered minor damage from leaking roofs.
In Norfolk, Granby High School students attending classes in the former Catholic High building escaped injury when a wind-whipped tree crashed into a classroom.
The tree broke several window panes but no students were hurt, Deputy Superintendent J. Frank Sellew said.
Power outages also gave students at Norfolk's Lake Taylor High School an early start on the weekend. Students were sent home about 11:30 a.m. Several other schools in the city also experienced periodic outages, Sellew said.
Power forced the closure of several schools in Portsmouth's Churchland area.
``Even with emergency power, we couldn't get the (electrical) gates open to the educational wing'' of the building, said Principal Raymond A. Hale.
``I just walked to the edge of the parking lot, turned around and left,'' said Martha Kunkle, 17, a senior. ``I was kind of looking forward to going to school because of the whole senior thing, and you have to make every day count.'' MEMO: Staff writers Bill Reed, Larry Brown, Cindy Clayton, Matthew
Bowers, Jon Glass and high school correspondent Sonya Islam contributed
to this report. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II/
A giant tree fell on this Suffolk home on Finney Avenue on Friday
morning. R.J. Beale, left, and Gary Rodgers work to repair the
damage later that day.
Photo by Gary C. Knapp<
Martine Mayfield of Norfolk talks on the phone while looking out
the front door of her Larchmont area home at the tree that fell
early Friday morning.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FRAN STORM DAMAGE HAMTON ROADS
by CNB