Preparations
Combined with Hurricane Cindy's landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States, uncertainty over Dennis's final landfall helped push oil prices to a record high of $61.28 a barrel on July 6, and again to $61.50 on July 7, although they dropped below $60 on July 8. Dennis was originally forecast to strike Louisiana, one of the oil-producing regions of the Gulf coast. Speculative spikes in oil prices due to Hurricane Dennis foreshadowed the far greater price spikes caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in late August and September.
In Haiti officials evacuated residents along the coastline, but noted that many were not obliging. In Cuba more than 600,000 residents were moved from their homes to government shelters or other locations in anticipation of Dennis. All schools were closed, and most flights in the country were suspended or cancelled.
In the United States, the governors of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana all declared states of emergency in their states. At 6 am CDT (2300 UTC) on July 9, 2005, all southbound lanes on Interstate 65 from Mobile to Montgomery, Alabama, were closed. Traffic was redirected, making all four lanes northbound to allow evacuations. In Alabama residents in all parts of Mobile County, and those south of I-10 in Baldwin County, were ordered to evacuate. Similar orders were issued in Mississippi for parts of Jackson, Hancock, and Harrison counties; and for coastal areas in the Florida Panhandle stretching from Escambia County to Bay County. Likewise, military installations such as NAS Pensacola, Whiting Field, Eglin AFB, Hurlburt Field and Tyndall AFB were all evacuated days before the storm. Additionally, Red Cross officials opened 87 shelters across the state which were able to hold about 14,000 evacuees.
In Florida, about 50,000 tourists in the Keys were forced to evacuate by July 8. The MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa evacuated its aircraft to McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas. 700,000 people in the Florida panhandle were evacuated in the days prior to Dennis, 100,000 of them in Escambia County alone. As a result of the large evacuations, more than 200 truckloads provided about 1.8 million gallons of gasoline. The Red Cross also moved 60 mobile canteens capable of serving 30,000 hot meals each a day to the staging points of Hattiesburg and Jackson. National guardsmen were mobilized, and four emergency medical teams, each capable of setting up a small field hospital, were on standby. Also, at Eglin Air Force Base, about 20,000 military personnel were evacuated, and at Hurlburt Field, home to Air Force's 16th Special Operations Wing, a mandatory evacuation was ordered for all 15,000 airmen and their families.
Read more about this topic: Hurricane Dennis
Famous quotes containing the word preparations:
“Whatever may be the reason, whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete—however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“The most evident difference between man and animals is this: the beast, in as much as it is largely motivated by the senses and with little perception of the past or future, lives only for the present. But man, because he is endowed with reason by which he is able to perceive relationships, sees the causes of things, understands the reciprocal nature of cause and effect, makes analogies, easily surveys the whole course of his life, and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete; being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and the spring, when her own taste could have fairer play.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)