To stay or go? Officials ponder Irene evacuations

Hurricane Irene could hit anywhere from North Carolina to New York this weekend, leaving officials in the path of uncertainty to make a delicate decision. Should they tell tourists to leave during one of the last weeks of the multibillion-dollar summer season?

Most were in a wait-and-see mode, holding out to get every dime before the storm's path crystalizes. North Carolina's governor told reporters not to scare people away.

"You will never endanger your tourists, but you also don't want to over inflate the sense of urgency about the storm. And so let's just hang on," North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said Wednesday. At the same time she warned to "prepare for the worst."

In the Bahamas, tourists cut their vacations short and caught the last flights out before the airport was closed. Those who remained behind with locals prepared for a rough night of violent winds and a dangerous storm surge that threatened to punish the low-lying chain of islands. Irene has already hit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, causing landslides and flooding homes. One woman was killed.

No warnings or watches were out late Wednesday for North Carolina though they were likely on Thursday. But on its Outer Banks, some tourists heeded evacuation orders for a tiny barrier island as Irene strengthened to a Category 3 storm, with winds of 120 mph (193 kph).

By Thursday, that could intensify to a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with winds starting at 131 mph (210 kph).
"We jam-packed as much fun as we could into the remainder of Tuesday," said Jessica Stanton Tice of Charleston, W.Va. She left Ocracoke Island on an early-morning ferry with her husband and toddler.
"We're still going to give North Carolina our vacation business, but we're going to Asheville" in the mountains, she said.

Officials said Irene could cause flooding, power outages or worse as far north as Maine, even if the eye of the storm stays offshore. Hurricane-force winds were expected 50 miles from the center of the storm.

Predicting the path of such a huge storm can be tricky, but the National Hurricane Center uses computer models to come up with a "cone of uncertainty," a three-day forecast that has become remarkably accurate in recent years. Forecasters are still about a day away from the cone reaching the East Coast. A system currently over the Great Lakes will play a large role in determining if Irene is pushed farther to the east in the next three or four days.

The mood was calm in Virginia Beach, Va. Jimmy Capps, manager of the Breakers Resort Inn, said the 56-room hotel is about 80 percent booked for the weekend, despite a few cancellations.

"It just appears they're not quite sure what the storm is going to do," Capps said. "The thing I'm amazed at now is that we haven't had more cancellations so far. Usually when they start mentioning the Outer Banks and Cape Lookout, which we are between, the phones light up."

In nearby Norfolk, the Navy ordered the Second Fleet to prepare to move out to sea early Thursday to keep the ships safe from the storm.
In New England, some beachgoers started second-guessing vacation plans. Steven Miller, who runs a charter sport fishing company off the coast of Rhode Island, hasn't received any cancellations, but no one has been calling to schedule trips in the next few days, either.

"The hoopla beforehand could end the season," Miller said. "Everybody yanks their boats out, everybody leaves, and then they don't come back because it's so late in the season."

Sandbags were in demand in the Northeast to protect already saturated grounds from flooding. Country music star Kenny Chesney moved a Sunday concert in Foxborough, Mass., up to Friday to avoid the storm. High school football games were also rescheduled, and officials still hadn't decided whether to postpone Sunday's dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall. Hundreds of thousands were expected for that event.

"Tourism depends so much on the weather, which is such an unpredictable element," said Samantha Rich, a tourism extension specialist at North Carolina State University. "An extremely hot season, an extremely cold season, a hurricane — it can make or break a season, especially for small businesses."

In North Carolina's Outer Banks, where about 300,000 visitors come every week in the summer, tourism is the lifeblood of the towns that dot the sandy barrier islands. Dare County beaches are the state's top vacation destination and it ordered tourists out beginning Thursday morning. Tourism represents about $834 million for businesses in the county, which has 8,000 rental homes and 3,000 hotel rooms, plus campground spots.More...