
DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707200089

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT 

DATELINE: MOBILE, ALA.                      LENGTH:  149 lines

DANNY STALLS AT COAST, DELUGING MOBILE AREA STORM DUMPS 2 FEET OF RAIN IN PARTS, WITH MORE EXPECTED TODAY.

Hurricane Danny hovered all day near the mouth of Mobile Bay on Saturday, lashing Mobile and the Gulf coast of Alabama with incessant 80 mph winds, sheets of rain and random tornadoes.

It dumped nearly 30 inches of rain over Alabama's resort coast, collapsed a railroad trestle and flooded low-lying seashore homes before it was downgraded to a tropical storm late Saturday. Danny had lost some of its circular shape and its 80-mph winds had weakened to below the 74-mph needed to be classified as a hurricane.

But the rain was still coming, and the damage had been done.

Homes along a 14-mile stretch of Gulf Shores, Ala., were severely damaged and half of the barrier island lay under water by nightfall Saturday, with whitecaps breaking clear across it. People were evacuated from their homes in the buckets of front-end loaders driven by the local volunteer fire department.

``On the beach we've got a lot of trees, a lot of limbs down, and some building damage,'' Fort Morgan volunteer fire chief Bob McCarthy said. ``It wasn't a high-category storm but we've had these winds since about 2:30 this morning. So we've had hour after hour of these continual winds and saturating rains.''

McCarthy said the storm buffeted the island with gusts of up to 115 mph.

``The first eight miles from the Fort going east is under water. We have got two front-end loaders trying to get (residents) out, trying to get them to a firetruck.''

One of those rescued by the firefighters was Mark Kelly, a Fort Morgan resident. ``It's pretty bad,'' he said, huddled inside the fire station.

``There's three feet of water on the road now and it's whitecapped over the top of the road,'' Kelly said. ``Roofs are coming off the houses. There's a few people left down there. They're trying to get them out the best they can. I saw several waterspouts right off the beach.''

Mobile received more than 9 inches of rain and by sunset, and rain was falling at the rate of 3 inches an hour in some areas.

The threat of tornadoes sent thousands to emergency shelters or the safety of inland motels. At least one death was blamed on the storm. About 20,000 homes and businesses lost power.

A railroad trestle collapsed under its weight of water, said Tom Jennings with the Mobile County EMA, but rail traffic had stopped because of the storm and no one was injured.

Another 10 to 20 inches of rain may fall on the Alabama coast before Danny creeps inland today, said National Hurricane Center meteorologist Fiona Horsfall.

Doppler radar readings earlier Saturday afternoon showed rainfall estimates that amazed even veteran forecasters - up to 32 inches. ``There has been just an unbelievable amount of rain,'' said Stu Ostro, a meteorological supervisor with The Weather Channel in Atlanta.

The reason was simple: Danny was barely moving. A high-pressure system north of Danny was blocking its path, Ostro said. The storm's center traveled 60 miles - nothing in hurricane terms - in 24 hours. And once it was over Mobile Bay early Saturday, about 30 miles south-southeast of Mobile, it stalled.

Even though much of the storm is over land, ``as long as the center remains over water, it can maintain its intensity,'' Ostro said. Hurricanes gain strength from the energy created by warm ocean waters.

At 9 p.m., the center of Danny remained about 30 miles west-southwest of Pensacola, Fla., and hurricane warnings were in effect from Gulfport, Miss., to Apalachicola.

Forecasters expect the storm to move northward into the Southeast, where it would rapidly lose strength. Its remnants are expected to bring at least some rain to the mid-Atlantic later in the week.

All day Saturday, the moseying storm vacuumed water from the bay and the Gulf of Mexico and flung it back in freshets of rain like a gigantic skyborne pump for hour after hour.

Winds tore loose the ``Roanoke,'' a 120-foot ferryboat, on Saturday morning and sent it careening and derelict into the stormy Gulf of Mexico, Dauphin Island police chief Jerry Beasley reported. The ship tore its pier apart before breaking loose.

``It's like a relative you can't get rid of,'' said Mike Sloane, who co-anchored radio coverage on the Gulf Coast Radio Network, 104.1-FM.

Vast tufts and tatters of dark clouds covered the sky above the Bay Bridge, which carries Interstate 10 east of Mobile. Trucks and cars shuddered as they made their way across the wind-whipped span.

But perhaps the strangest sight of all was the huge bay itself: Northerly winds blew tons of water out into the Gulf, so that mile-wide mudflats yawned like slimy meadows of drowned weeds, stretching to a faraway jumbled horizon of liquid gray. Oysters bristled up in spiky beds all across the bay, marooned in muddy millions.

The Battleship Alabama, now mothballed and converted to a tourist attraction, groaned at its moorings on the west side of the bay.

The listless hurricane took turns dousing each side of the bay, pouring rain on the eastern shore throughout the morning, then showering western Mobile with sheets of water Saturday afternoon.

A condominium under construction at Fort Morgan was splintered to matchwood and beachfront homes were battered shells by evening. Winds knocked over hundreds of trees and ripped shingles from roofs. ``I've got a chimney in my front yard in three feet of water,'' one radio caller said.

Danny continued to perplex forecasters and exasperate locals who by nightfall were facing hours more rain from the sluggish storm.

Danny may well be the wettest storm of any kind to hit the region. A storm in July of 1916 dumped 23 inches of rain on Mobile over five days; Danny will likely surpass that record by this morning.

The national hurricane center, meanwhile, was able to turn its full attention to Danny on Saturday as a second tropical system it had been tracking in the eastern Caribbean weakened and lost its tropical depression status.

The remnants of Tropical Depression 5 consisted of an area of disturbed weather and a weak low pressure area over the northeastern Caribbean. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by Knight-Ridder News Service

and staff writer Steve Stone. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A couple looks for help after getting stuck in floodwaters in

Theodore, Ala., on Saturday. Hurricane Danny caused flooding around

Mobile, Ala.

Photos

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Floodwaters in Gulf Shores, Ala., sweep an abandoned car away

Saturday after Hurricane Danny made landfall. Some eight miles of

land east of Mobile Bay was under water and the rain is expected to

continue today.

Jim Cobern cleans up roofing shingles, stripped from roofs by