Extreme Weather, Wild Fires Befall Nation
Pastor Dale Morgan
May 9, 9:48 PM EDT
*Extreme Weather, Wild Fires Befall Nation*
By ROGER PETTERSON
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Nature's fury made life miserable Wednesday from one
end of the nation to the other, with people forced out of their homes by
wildfires near both coasts and the Canadian border and by major flooding
in the Midwest.
And although the calendar still said spring, the first named storm of
the year was whipping up surf on the beaches of the Southeast.
Overall, it wasn't quite a day for the record books.
"It's a major flood," National Weather Service meteorologist Suzanne
Fortin said Wednesday of the flooding in Missouri. "It won't be a record
breaker, but it will be in the top three."
However, a three-week-old fire in southern Georgia had become that
state's biggest in five decades after charring 167 square miles of
forest and swamp.
Smoke-filled air created a burning smell and a dusting of ashes that
coated cars and buildings through much of Florida and southeastern
Georgia. The haze over most of Florida even closed several highways and
sent people with breathing problems indoors.
The flooding was produced by the drenching weekend thunderstorms across
the Plains states that also devastated Greensburg, Kan. In addition to
11 tornado deaths, two drowning deaths were blamed on the storms, one
each in Oklahoma and Kansas.
High water had poured over the tops of at least 20 levees along the
Missouri River and other streams in the state, authorities said Wednesday.
Missouri National Guard troops were helping. And Highway Patrol troopers
were working 24-hour shifts near Big Lake, a village town of about 150
permanent residents in the state's northwest corner, which was inundated
by five levee breaks along the Missouri River and four smaller ones on
other streams, said patrol Lt. John Hotz.
No injuries were reported but the Missouri Water Patrol rescued about 20
people from their flooded homes, including Glenn Burger, who had the
patrol return him to his home Wednesday to rescue his two pet cockatiels.
"I've had them about five years and I hated to lose them," said Burger,
78, who lived through floods in 1984 and 1993. "This is the last one.
I'm through. I'm going to move to town."
In Missouri's Jackson County, authorities evacuated 300 to 400 residents
of Levasy on Wednesday. At least a dozen homes were partially under
water from the Missouri River, a dispatcher said.
In central Missouri, the state capital, Jefferson City, was preparing
for flooding. After floods in 1993 and 1995, the city raised the
elevation of its riverside sewage treatment plant, and the federal
government bought out scores of homes on the north shore of the river,
but the airport and businesses are still vulnerable.
On the West Coast, in view of many Los Angeles residents, a blaze had
covered more than 800 acres in the city's sprawling Griffith Park behind
the iconic Griffith Observatory.
The danger to homes south of the park had eased Wednesday and many of
the hundreds of residents evacuated overnight were allowed to return.
However, fire officials warned that conditions could change.
"The canyons and those erratic winds are dangerous," said fire Capt.
Carlos Calvillo.
The fire appeared to have been accidental, said Battalion chief John
Miller, who oversees arson investigations.
The fire destroyed Dante's View, a trailside terraced garden on Mount
Hollywood.
"This is a tragic sunrise," City Councilman Tom LaBonge said while
surveying the damage. "You look right there and you'd think you were at
the observatory looking at Mars."
In the Southeast, a wildfire in northern Florida's Bradford County had
forced the evacuation of about 250 homes, said Annaleasa Winter, a state
forestry spokeswoman. That fire had blackened 16,000 to 18,000 acres and
was 20 percent contained.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said the state had more than 220 active fires
Wednesday that had charred a total of 125 square miles.
Officials in southeastern Georgia issued a mandatory evacuation
Wednesday for an area including the town of Moniac, saying that by early
Thursday it may be in the path of a 107,000-acre blaze in the Okefenokee
National Wildlife Refuge, the largest recorded blaze since state
record-keeping began in 1957.
Smoke was spreading across wide areas of Florida as wind circulated
around Subtropical Storm Andrea, centered about 100 miles off the
Georgia coast with top sustained wind around 45 mph. The National
Weather Service forecast that the storm would show little movement and
dissipate near the coast in four days.
Battling the blazes won't get much immediate help from rain. Forecasters
said no significant downpours were expected over land through at least
Thursday morning. The storm's lightning could also spark off more fires,
meteorologists said.
Elsewhere, a wildfire near the Canadian border in northeastern Minnesota
had covered more than 34 square miles Wednesday, adding more than 8
square miles in one day, authorities said. Since it was spotted over the
weekend, it has destroyed 45 buildings, including multimillion-dollar
homes, and firefighters said it was just 5 percent contained.
More than 100 people had been removed from their homes in the path of
the fire.
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Associated Press writers Russ Bynum on Tybee Island, Ga., Amy Forliti
along the Gunflint Trial in Minnesota, Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas
City, Mo., Jeremiah Marquez in Los Angeles and Ron Word in Jacksonville,
Fla. contributed to this report.