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Subject: Poor Florida...

We’ve watched while the stars burned
Out, and creation played in reverse.
The Universe freezing in half-light.
Once I thought to escape.
To end a master, step out of the
Path of collapse. Escape would make us God.
Yet I cannot help but remember one enigma,
A hybrid, elusive destroyer.
This is the one mystery I have not solved.
The only element unaccounted for.

Man guys, I feel sorry for you. We never get anything major here in Washington. I just checked online and saw that Hurricane Ivan is a catagory 5 and likely to hit Florida. Man that sucks! In case you hadn't heard about Ivan yet you may want to Google it. MSNBC had a good article.

  • 09.09.2004 3:24 PM PDT

We’ve watched while the stars burned
Out, and creation played in reverse.
The Universe freezing in half-light.
Once I thought to escape.
To end a master, step out of the
Path of collapse. Escape would make us God.
Yet I cannot help but remember one enigma,
A hybrid, elusive destroyer.
This is the one mystery I have not solved.
The only element unaccounted for.

Here's the article.


KEY WEST, Fla. - Hurricane Ivan intensified Thursday, heading straight for Jamaica and possibly Florida with 160 mph winds after it killed at least 20 people while pummeling Grenada, Barbados and other islands. Foreigners began fleeing Jamaica, and U.S. officials ordered people to evacuate the Florida Keys.

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Widespread looting erupted in St. George’s, Grenada’s capital, and dazed survivors picked through debris and tried to salvage remnants left by the storm. An Associated Press reporter watched people taking televisions and shopping carts of food from warehouses.

Troops from other Caribbean nations were on the way to help restore order in Grenada, where the country’s police commissioner said every police station was damaged.

Although Hurricane Ivan is at least four days from Florida, if it reaches the state at all, officials in the Keys ordered tourists and residents to evacuate Thursday.


Ivan became a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity — 1 as lowest, 5 as catastrophic. The storm packed sustained winds of 160 mph with higher gusts, but forecasters said it could weaken later to a Category 4 storm.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the state had no choice but to go through another round of preparations, though a third hurricane threat seemed unreal. “Maybe someone creative in Hollywood could come up with something like this, but this is past my imagination,” he said.

Evacuation orders go out
Monroe County emergency officials said the evacuation order was effective at 9 a.m. ET Thursday for island tourists. It was the third evacuation ordered in the Keys in a month, the previous two for hurricanes Charley and Frances.

Mobile home residents were urged to begin evacuating at 6 p.m. Thursday, and other residents were told to leave Friday.

“I don’t think that people will think twice when we tell them it’s a (Category) 4 heading right at us. I think they will be pretty responsive,” said Monroe County emergency manager Irene Toner.

Jamaica, Cuba next
Ivan is expected to reach Jamaica by Friday, Cuba by the weekend and possibly the Florida coast by late Sunday or early Monday. How Ivan handles a ridge over the Bahamas could determine whether it spins into the Gulf of Mexico — or off of Florida’s east coast.

FREE VIDEO


• Floridians fear the worst
Sept. 9: For the third time this summer, Floridians are bracing for another hurricane, preparing for Ivan’s expected arrival. NBC’s Jay Gray reports.
MSNBC


“After Jamaica, it's probably going to hit somewhere in the U.S., unfortunately," said Jennifer Pralgo, a forecaster at the U.S. National Hurricane Center. "We're hoping it's not Florida again, but it's taking a fairly similar track to Charley at the moment."

Charley killed 27 people in southwest Florida last month and caused an estimated $6.8 billion in insured damage. Hurricane Frances hit the state last weekend, causing several billion dollars in damage and taking 19 lives in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Some 1.1 million Florida homes and businesses were still without power Thursday.

The last time three hurricanes hit Florida in a single season was 1964, when Cleo, Dora and Isbell hit the state.


Another meteorologist at the Miami center, Hugh Cobb, added this grim warning: "Whoever gets this, it's going to be bad."

Jamaican leader P.J. Patterson urged his people to pray. “We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Let us pray for God’s care,” Patterson said Wednesday night. “This is a time that we must demonstrate that we are indeed our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper.”

90 percent of Grenada homes hit
Ivan damaged 90 percent of homes in Grenada and destroyed a 17th century stone prison that left criminals on the loose as looting erupted. Some escaped convicts included politicians jailed for killings in a 1983 left-wing palace coup that led the United States to invade.

American medical students fearful of marauders armed themselves with knives and sticks.


NOAA
Hurricane Ivan is seen in this satellite image taken Thursday, just north of Venezuela. The Florida peninsula is at top near center.
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"We are terribly devastated.... It's beyond imagination," Prime Minister Keith Mitchell told his people and the world from aboard a British Royal Navy vessel that rushed to the rescue. Ivan was the most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean in 10 years.

“It looks like a landslide happened,” said Nicole Organ, a veterinary student from Toronto at St. George's University, which overlooks the Grenadian capital. “There are all these colors coming down the mountainside — sheets of metal, pieces of shacks, roofs came off in layers.”

Death throughout region
Before it slammed into Grenada, Ivan gave Barbados and St. Vincent a pummeling, damaging hundreds of homes and cutting utilities. Thousands of people remained without electricity and water on Wednesday.

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Four children drowned after they were swept into the sea from a beach in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

In Tobago, officials reported a 32-year-old pregnant woman died when a 40-foot palm tree fell into her home, pinning her to her bed.

In Venezuela, a 32-year-old man died after battering waves engulfed a store on the northern coast.

A 75-year-old Canadian woman drowned in a canal swollen by flood waters in Barbados. Neighbors said the Toronto native, who'd lived in Barbados for 30 years, had braved the storm to search for her cat.

Details on the extent of the death and destruction in Grenada did not emerge until Wednesday because the storm cut all communications with the country of 100,000 people, and halted radio transmissions on the island.

Grenada death toll could rise
Prime Minister Mitchell, whose own home was destroyed, feared the death toll would rise. He said much of the country's agriculture had been wiped out, including the primary nutmeg crop.

FREE VIDEO

• Tracking hurricanes
Sept. 9: NBC’s Mark Potter takes a tour inside the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
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"If you see the country today, it would be a surprise to anyone that we did not have more deaths than it appears at the moment," Mitchell said.

“We have got a tremendous hit that we never expected — you are talking hundreds of millions of dollars of damage," Mitchell later told BBC Radio. "We have declared the country a national disaster, contacted our international friends and indicated that."

The United Nations is sending a disaster team, Eckhard said in New York City. The Caribbean disaster response agency, based in Barbados, said its team arrived Wednesday afternoon along with U.S. aid and Pan American Health Organization officials.

Students arm themselves
Students there, mostly Americans, were arming themselves with knives, sticks and pepper spray against looters, said Sonya Lazarevic, 36, from New York City. "We don't feel safe," she said on a bad telephone line.

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When Organ wandered downtown after the hurricane passed, she said she saw bands of men carrying machetes looting a hardware store. She said she saw a bank with a glass facade intact on her way down that was totally smashed when she returned.

While the storm passed, students hid under mattresses or in bathrooms. "The pipes were whistling, the doors were vibrating, gusts were coming underneath the window," Lazarevic said. "It was absolutely terrifying."

Bedaau said every Grenadian police station was damaged, hindering efforts to control looting. He said police were trying to set up a temporary post at St. George's fish market, and that Trinidad and other Caribbean countries were sending troops.

Elsewhere, Ivan pulverized concrete homes into piles of rubble and tore away hundreds of landmark red zinc roofs.

Grim comparisons
Cobb, the U.S. National Hurricane Center forecaster, said that if Ivan hit Jamaica, it could be more destructive than Hurricane Gilbert, which was only Category 3 when it devastated the island in 1988.

At Kingston’s international airport, dozens of foreigners lined up to get off the island.

“We were going to stick it out but the company I work for told everybody to evacuate,” said Dennis Hennessey, 39, a building contractor from Essex Junction, Vt., who was helping build the new U.S. Embassy in Kingston. “They say Jamaica is a blessed place, and I hope it is."

Jamaica, Haiti post warnings
Jamaica posted a hurricane warning and ordered all schools closed and fishermen to pull their skiffs ashore and head for dry land. Haiti's southwest peninsula was on hurricane watch and the city of Les Cayes had already suffered hours of drenching downpours Wednesday night.

Les Cayes residents worried Ivan would bring disaster equal to May floods that killed 1,700 people and left 1,600 missing and presumed dead along the Haiti-Dominican Republic border.

At 2 p.m. ET, Ivan was centered about 360 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 60 miles and tropical storm-force winds another 160 miles. Ivan was moving west-northwest at 15 mph.

Ivan last Sunday became the fourth major hurricane of a busy Atlantic season.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

  • 09.09.2004 3:28 PM PDT
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i wish luck to whom ever lives in florida i hope you and all of your belongings will get through this storm safely

  • 09.09.2004 3:29 PM PDT
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Holy crap. The stuff that has been happening lately, it's insane.

  • 09.09.2004 4:03 PM PDT

We’ve watched while the stars burned
Out, and creation played in reverse.
The Universe freezing in half-light.
Once I thought to escape.
To end a master, step out of the
Path of collapse. Escape would make us God.
Yet I cannot help but remember one enigma,
A hybrid, elusive destroyer.
This is the one mystery I have not solved.
The only element unaccounted for.

I was wondering where you had gotten to Recon! I didn't know you lived in Florida.
How long were you without power? The longest I've ever gone is 5 days during a ice storm in the middle of the winter. Cold.

  • 09.09.2004 4:03 PM PDT
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The sad part of all these hurricanes is that there only gonna get stronger and more are gonna form then there are now in the years to come. Hehe our planets really -blam!- up right now

  • 09.09.2004 4:07 PM PDT

If Ivan hits, wouldn't that be a new record of some sort? Last I heard Francis hitting right after (I forget the first hurricane's name) was the worst two storms in a row in recorded history.

Recon Number 54, all I can say is to be sure that you stay somewhere safe.

  • 09.09.2004 4:21 PM PDT

We’ve watched while the stars burned
Out, and creation played in reverse.
The Universe freezing in half-light.
Once I thought to escape.
To end a master, step out of the
Path of collapse. Escape would make us God.
Yet I cannot help but remember one enigma,
A hybrid, elusive destroyer.
This is the one mystery I have not solved.
The only element unaccounted for.

Yeah, at least when you're cold you can just get more blankets. When it's hot you can't do a dang thing about it. I lived in Arizona for a few years, so I've experienced hot weather like that. I've actually experienced just about everything...
Washinton State-->
Hawaii-->
Washington State-->
Alaska-->
Arizona-->
Washington State.
Yep, I've gotten around.

[Edited on 9/9/2004 4:22:33 PM]

  • 09.09.2004 4:22 PM PDT
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Good luck. One of my cousins is a Floridian from Palm Beach; he just barely dodged the bullet with Frances. Luckily he came up before Frances even reached the US and is staying with my grandmother until Ivan passes. I must say that in these humid Upstate New York days the days of rain that have been spinning off of the hurricanes have been quite welcome.

  • 09.09.2004 4:31 PM PDT
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just stay alive

  • 09.09.2004 5:05 PM PDT
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Yay! Another one. More rain for the Carolinas. :>

  • 09.09.2004 6:21 PM PDT
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Wrath Of God

yes i used to live in Florida and im glad im not there now

But Florida was the best thing that has happened to me so i will go back there some day

  • 09.09.2004 6:24 PM PDT
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Hurricanes are fun to watch

  • 09.09.2004 6:25 PM PDT
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Only when your not in one

I saw pics where semis where thrown
HOLY CRAP

  • 09.09.2004 6:26 PM PDT
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-blam!- the floridians, who gives a -blam!-

there's 49 other states

what the hell is one getting ruined?


right?

-blam!- ther floridians and bushes brother

  • 09.09.2004 6:28 PM PDT
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Ive been in a hurricane maybe not one as bad as charly or frances but ive been in a catagory 2 befor and that was fun even though big ass trees almost fell on my house

  • 09.09.2004 6:28 PM PDT
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You -blam!-. I mean really if florida's gone then where are we going to go on vacation when the weather does get back to normal?

  • 09.09.2004 6:31 PM PDT
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Yes poor south beach

:(

[Edited on 9/9/2004 6:33:02 PM]

  • 09.09.2004 6:32 PM PDT
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Posted by: H3CK H0LE
You -blam!-. I mean really if florida's gone then where are we going to go on vacation when the weather does get back to normal?


Maybe some other place theres like a billion other places you can go besides flordia so pick one or shut up

  • 09.09.2004 6:33 PM PDT
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Well if Ivan does hit hopefully like Francis it'll just go down in strength over time.I'm no quite sure Florida could handle more damage,the damages are already ranging in the Billions.All we can do for now is hope nothing really happens.

  • 09.09.2004 6:48 PM PDT
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Posted by: H3CK H0LE
You -blam!-. I mean really if florida's gone then where are we going to go on vacation when the weather does get back to normal?


put some more cheese on your beefed up brothers taco

  • 09.09.2004 6:49 PM PDT

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