THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 19, 1995 TAG: 9508190040
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
For thousands, the list of normal Saturday errands - the bank, the cleaners, the grocery - will be expanded today to include prying nails out of sheets of plywood and scraping sun-baked glue from windows marred by miles of masking tape.
Welcome to the weekend after the storm that wasn't. You can hang that basket of begonias out on the porch again. As for the tape, well, try to take it down before the sun burns it into the glass.
In the span of one work week, the region went from learning Felix's name, to fearing its winds, to worrying that the storm's legacy would be disastrous flooding, rather than hammering gales.
It was an unusual storm from the beginning, taking a direct line across the Atlantic from its spawning ground off Africa. It avoided the usual meanderings through the Caribbean and up the Florida coastline.
By Friday, though, a region that had spent the better part of that week in a mass anxiety attack was back to simply complaining about the heat and humidity.
Each spring, as predictably as the return of tourists from Quebec, the region's disaster preparedness people warn that hurricane season is approaching, and that the public, long blase about the storms, had better take the threat seriously.
Given the degree to which Hurricane Felix shut down coastal Virginia and North Carolina, it would be tough to argue that people are taking the storms lightly. Residents were terribly impressed by full-color satellite images of a storm the size of Texas, churning on a counter-clockwise collision course with their homes.
The Navy sent just about anything that would float out to sea, and tens of thousands of workers took two days off the job to get ready for the storm or get out of its way. As early as Tuesday, nervousness was edging toward fear, and there appeared to be no way Felix could miss.
More than a quarter-million tourists fled the Carolina-Virginia shore region, taking their money to inland haunts such as Williamsburg or Busch Gardens, or simply heading back to Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and other safe havens.
``We were extremely happy with the response from the public,'' said Charlie Hartig, spokesman for Dare County, N.C. ``We really were. The fact that we could move almost 200,000 people in a period of eight to nine hours is a clear indication of how seriously people now take these hurricanes.''
Hartig credits two sets of events: Dramatic advances in weather-reporting technology, and the disastrous impact of hurricanes Hugo in South Carolina, in 1989, and Andrew in Florida, in 1992.
``My personal observation,'' said Jim Spore, Virginia Beach city manager, ``is that people did take it seriously. I know if you went around town and tried to buy supplies and things, you saw how seriously they were taking it. I was pretty pleased.
``I just hope that because it didn't come they don't let their guard down and next time not respond as well as they did.''
By Thursday morning it looked more like the storm would stall, then head back to the east. As the afternoon waned with nothing but sunshine and stiff breezes - not even a needed shower - it seemed certain that Felix would miss.
The downside to all that pent-up public angst is that many people said they were disappointed that Felix took a dive on them.
``A word I've heard a lot is `cheated,' '' said Matthew Bernier, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk.
Two forces may be at work here, Bernier theorized:
``First, there's the idea that a hurricane is potentially very dangerous, and people like to feel they're prepared and can handle something that's dangerous. People like to prove themselves, to get a chance to prove they can handle something like that. . . . To say, `Hey, wow, the hurricane came and went and we managed, we survived.'
``The other is that sometimes, as we get a little more advanced technologically, people make an effort to understand the world around them. . the numbers and all that, they have a sense that they've got things under control. In reality, with all the technology we have to monitor the hurricane, we didn't have any more control over it than we did without all that.''
He also suggested that a storm named Felix fosters images of a felicitous cartoon cat, or the nerdy Felix Unger character from the ``Odd Couple'' movie and television series. Such soft images in the name, he said, might make people less afraid of the storm.
``It's strange,'' Bernier said of the big letdown. ``But lots of things psychologically are strange.''
Stranger than the ``I'm disappointed'' reaction is the lingering myth of the powers of masking tape to fend off a hurricane. Masking tape marked thousands of homes and businesses in the region, like some weird talisman. And that's about how effective most of it would be in a real storm.
Tape will not stop a window from breaking. The principle behind masking tape is that it might keep flying glass from injuring residents should a pane shatter during a wind blast. That will only work if the pane is heavily taped, inside and out, to the point of covering most of the window.
All those single ``X'' marks meant little more than wishful thinking before the storm, and a lot scrubbing and scraping afterward.
Dr. Duane Harding, the affable weather guru for WTKR-TV, Channel 3, found himself making that point repeatedly Wednesday night during the station's live hurricane coverage. Nothing short of three-quarter-inch plywood or metal shutters will do, he said.
His colleagues were still ribbing him about the great tape debate the following evening, but Dr. Duane stuck to his guns. He did, however, pass along a tip from a viewer: WD-40, a common spray lubricant, is rumored to work wonders on tape residue.
The meteorologist's steely logic to the contrary, stock in Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, the company that makes the 3M line of tapes, gained one-eighth point Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, and by 2 p.m. Friday was at 56, up yet another quarter of a point.
Shrewd investors might keep that in mind the next time a storm begins to form in the waters off western Africa. It's at least as safe as betting on where the hurricane might land. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by L. Todd Spencer
Early Thursday morning, a couple looks out over rough ocean waters
during high tide at First Street in Virginia Beach. The photographer
used a flashlight and a long camera exposure to create the surreal
lighting effect.
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FELIX by CNB