NATION/WORLD
Saturday, October 8, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 9A
Hurricane threatens some of South’s most storied cities
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP)
— Hurricane Matthew spared Flor-
ida’s most heavily populated stretch
from a catastrophic blow Friday but
threatened some of the South’s most
historic and picturesque cities with
ruinous looding and wind damage
as it pushed its way up the coastline.
Among the cities in the cross-
hairs were St. Augustine, Florida;
Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston,
South Carolina.
“There are houses that will
probably not ever be the same again
or not even be there,” St. Augustine
Mayor Nancy Shaver lamented
as battleship-gray loodwaters
coursed through the streets of the
451-year-old city founded by the
Spanish.
Matthew — the most powerful
hurricane to threaten the Atlantic
Seaboard in over a decade — set
off alarm as it closed in on the U.S.,
having left more than 300 people
dead in Haiti.
In the end, it sideswiped Flor-
ida’s Atlantic coast early Friday,
swamping streets, toppling trees
onto homes and knocking out power
to more than 1 million people. But
it stayed just far enough offshore to
prevent major damage to cities like
Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West
Palm Beach. And the coast never
felt the full force of its 120 mph
winds.
“It looks like we’ve dodged a
bullet,” said Rep. Patrick Murphy,
a Democrat whose district includes
Martin County, just north of West
Palm Beach.
At least four people died in
Florida. An elderly St. Lucie County
couple died from carbon monoxide
fumes while running a generator in
their garage and two women were
killed in separate events when trees
fell on a home and a camper.
While the hurricane was weak-
ening quickly, several northeastern
Florida cities, including Jackson-
AP Photo/Eric Gay
An oficial vehicle navigates debris as it passes along Highway
A1A after it was partially washed away by Hurricane Matthew,
Friday in Flagler Beach, Fla.
ville, were still in harm’s way,
along with communities farther up
the coast. Authorities warned that
not only could Matthew easily turn
toward land, it could also cause
deadly looding with its surge of
seawater.
The storm gouged out several
large sections of the coastal A1A
highway north of Daytona Beach,
and had nearly completely washed
out the northbound lane for about a
mile at Flagler Beach.
“It’s pretty bad, it’s jagged all
over the place,” said Oliver Shields,
whose two-story house is within
sight of the highway.
About 500,000 people were
under evacuation orders in the Jack-
sonville area, along with another
half-million on the Georgia coast.
More than 300,000 led their homes
in South Carolina. The latest fore-
cast showed the storm could also
scrape the North Carolina coast.
“If you’re hoping it’s just going
to pass far enough offshore that this
isn’t a problem anymore — that is
a very, very big mistake that you
could make that could cost you your
life,” National Hurricane Center
Director Rick Knabb warned.
St. Augustine, which is the
nation’s
oldest
permanently
occupied European settlement and
includes a 17th-century Spanish
fortress and many historic homes
turned into bed-and-breakfasts,
was awash in rain and seawater that
authorities said could top 8 feet.
“It’s a really serious devastating
situation,” the mayor of the city of
14,000 said. “The looding is just
going to get higher and higher and
higher.”
Historic downtown Charleston,
usually bustling with tourists who
lock to see the city’s beautifully
maintained antebellum homes, was
eerily quiet, with many stores and
shops boarded up with plywood and
protected by stacks of sandbags.
The
city
announced
a
midnight-to-6
a.m.
curfew
Saturday, around the time the coast
was expected to take the brunt of
the storm.
Matthew’s outer bands began
lashing Savannah, a city that was
settled in 1733 and has a handsome
historic district of moss-draped
trees, brick and cobblestone streets,
Greek revival mansions and other
18th- and 19th-century homes.
Matthew was expected to bring
winds of 50 to 60 mph that could
snap branches from the burly
live oaks and damage the historic
homes. And 8 to 14 inches of rain
could bring some street looding.
Savannah-Chatham
County
Police Chief Jack Lumpkin said
oficers will enforce a dusk-until-
dawn curfew.
A small crew of workers
Thursday set out to button up the
Owens-Thomas house, one of
Savannah’s architectural gems. The
1819 Greek revival mansion serves
as a museum.
Sonja Wallen, a curator, said
antique rugs and furniture were
moved away from the home’s more
than 40 windows, many of them still
with their original8glass. Windows
were itted with plywood and other
coverings, while sandbags were
stacked at the basement entrance.
“It’s basically a lot of little
details — sandbags and duct tape
around doorways where water can
get in,” Wallen said. “It’s pretty
much the same stuff you would do
for any home.”
Some of Georgia’s resort islands
were expected to take the brunt of
Matthew’s storm surge, including
St. Simons and Tybee.
On Tybee Island, where most of
the 3,000 residents were evacuated,
Jeff Dickey held out hope that the
storm might shift and spare his
home. But as the rain picked up, he
decided staying wasn’t worth the
risk.
“We kind of tried to wait to see if
it will tilt more to the east,” Dickey
said. “But it’s go time.”
Mayor
Jason
Buelterman
personally called some of the
holdouts, hoping to persuade them
to move inland.
“This is what happens when
you don’t have a hurricane for
100 years,” he said. “People get
complacent.”
Airlines canceled at least
5,000 lights Wednesday through
Saturday, including many in and out
of Orlando.
BRIEFLY
Russia faces
Syria showdown
MOSCOW (AP) —
International diplomatic
pressure increased on
Moscow Friday to end the
joint Russian-Syrian siege
of the city of Aleppo, but
Moscow’s U.N. ambassador
says he will most likely veto
a Security Council resolution
that would ground Russian
warplanes.
Russia’s parliament
meanwhile ratiied a treaty
with Syria that allows its
troops to stay indeinitely
in the country, a show of
support for embattled Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
The siege by Syrian
forces backed by Russian
warplanes has inlicted
immense suffering on
civilians in the city’s
rebel-held eastern districts.
A cease-ire brokered by the
United States and Russia
collapsed last month and
Washington-Moscow ties
have deteriorated sharply;
Russian lawmakers said
ratifying the treaty with
Syria on Friday was a
necessary step to stand up to
the U.S.
The United States and
Russia support opposite
sides in the war — Moscow
has been a staunch Assad
ally and Washington backs
With the
extra money,
my dream
car became
a reality.
rebels trying to oust him.
As Aleppo’s misery
dragged on, Russia’s United
Nations ambassador Vitaly
Churkin rejected a French-
proposed Security Council
resolution that would call
for grounding all aircraft,
including Russia’s, over
Aleppo.
Russia’s air campaign in
Syria, launched a year ago,
has reversed the tide of war
and helped Assad’s forces
regain some key ground.
Moscow says the goal of its
military operation is to assist
the Syrian army in the ight
against terrorism. It rejects
accusations of targeting
civilians.
U.N. criticism
of Trump draws
Russian complaint
GENEVA (AP) — Russia
lodged a formal complaint
last month with the United
Nations over a top U.N.
oficial’s condemnations of
Donald Trump and some
European politicians, an
intervention that underscores
the unusual links between
the Republican presidential
nominee and the Kremlin.
There is no evidence
Trump sought Russia’s
assistance, or was even
aware of the criticism by
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the
U.N. high commissioner for
human rights.
Vitaly Churkin,
Russia’s ambassador to
the United Nations, told
The Associated Press on
Friday that he complained
to U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon about Zeid’s
remarks.
Three diplomats familiar
with the conversation said
the complaint occurred in
a private meeting Sept. 13.
Churkin angrily protested a
pair of speeches by Zeid that
denounced “demagogues”
and speciically targeted
Trump and several populist
leaders in Europe, even
likening their tactics to
Islamic State propaganda.
“Prince Zeid is
overstepping his limits
from time to time and we’re
unhappy about it,” Churkin
said Friday. “He criticized
a number of heads of state,
government. He should stick
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to his ile, which is important
enough.”
In a speech in Cleveland
three months before
Republicans gathered
there to nominate Trump,
Zeid said: “In what may
be a crucial election for
leadership of this country
later this year, we have
seen a full-frontal attack
— disguised as courageous
taboo-busting — on some
fundamental, hard-won
tenets of decency and social
cohesion that have come to
be accepted by American
society.”
“Less than 150 miles
away from where I speak,
a front-running candidate
to be president of this
country declared, just a few
months ago, his enthusiastic
support for torture,” said
Zeid, a Jordanian royal,
referencing a speech Trump
gave in Ohio in November
promising to restore
waterboarding and introduce
even harsher interrogation
methods for suspected
terrorists.
The Kremlin has said
it has no position on the
U.S. election. Its oficials
regularly oppose the U.N.
interfering in what it
considers the internal politics
of sovereign nations.
Still, Churkin’s personal
intervention could add
to questions about the
relationship between Trump
and Russia.
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