Ernesto eases but forces evacuations

ERNESTO weakened to a tropical depression as it ploughed northward over land yesterday, but it still had the punch to lash Virginia with 6 inches of rain, flooding highways, forcing evacuations and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people.

The system was blamed for at least one traffic death in Virginia and one in North Carolina, where it had made landfall just before midnight on the heels of thunderstorms that already had drenched the region.

“It wasn’t any big deal,” said Dennis Rood of Carolina Beach, NC, northeast of the landfall point. “The house shuddered a little bit, but that’s about it.”

As the storm headed north, flash flood watches were posted for wide sections of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and central New York state, the National Weather Service said.

By midday, rain was falling across the eastern two-thirds of Virginia, said Bill Sammler, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield. The core of the heavy rain was over the Hampton Roads area in the state’s southeast corner.

“We’ve seen some significant flooding in the streets in the cities in Hampton Roads,” said Bob Spieldenner, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. No major damage had been reported.

Although the storm’s sustained wind speed was down to about 35 mph, below the 39-mph minimum for a tropical storm, gusts to 60 mph were measured in southeastern Virginia.

North Carolina got the heaviest initial rainfall.

The governors of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, and the mayor of the District of Columbia, each declared a state of emergency because of the storm. Maryland Gov Robert Ehrlich said Friday he decided against a state of emergency because his state has been so dry.

Pennsylvania Gov Ed Rendell cancelled campaign and official events on Friday and the state police and National Guard were on alert.

In Richmond, Va, city officials ordered the evacuation of about 200 homes near Battery Park on the city’s north side. The area had been flooded earlier this week during heavy rain that also saturated much of North Carolina.

On its track northward from Florida, the storm stayed offshore of South Carolina, but its outer bands still inundated Charleston streets.

Ernesto’s top sustained wind hit 70mph, just 4mph below hurricane strength, as it made landfall at Long Beach, NC, just west of Cape Fear, at 11:30 pm.