Hurricane Dennis Causes Death and Destruction, But Less Than Ivan

Hurricane Dennis was the top weather story throughout the southeast last week as the storm bore down on the Gulf coast, bringing back memories of the havoc wrought by Hurricane Ivan only ten months ago. But although Dennis didn’t prove to be as destructive as Ivan, it has nonetheless left a swath of destruction and even death in its wake as it tore its way up through the Gulf of Mexico. The storm sideswiped Jamaica before heading to Cuba, where over 1 million people had been evacuated to take them out of Dennis’s path. Traveling on to Haiti, the storm triggered floods, mudslides, and collapses of bridges and houses. At least 20 deaths in Haiti and Cuba have been attributed to Dennis, and according to a U.N. official, at least 100 people are missing in Haiti’s southwestern peninsula. Most of the missing are in remote mountainous communities that U.N. troops and rescuers have been unable to reach.

As Dennis continued moving northward, it regained some strength just before sideswiping the Florida Keys, where it uprooted trees, flooded roads, and knocked out power to thousands of residents. The hurricane spawned several tornados to the north, and high winds knocked down trees in the Tampa area, cutting out power and making roadways impassable. Before Dennis arrived, nearly 1.4 million people were ordered to leave the Gulf Coast, all the way from Florida to Louisiana, and even police in some areas evacuated as they did last year during Hurricane Ivan. After last year’s devastation, no one wanted to be caught in the path of another dangerous hurricane. Last year’s storms—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and then Jeanne—rampaged through the Caribbean leaving a swath of death and destruction not seen in decades and causing billions of dollars in damages.

Although residents of the Gulf coast are now saying that the "dodged a bullet" with Hurricane Dennis, more than a half a million residents are without power, and one man was electrocuted when he stepped on a downed power line. The main utility company in Florida’s panhandle said that many customers may not get their power restored for three weeks or more. The storm’s effects are being felt far beyond the panhandle, with about 90,000 people having power outages across the Alabama coast.

Dennis has now lost strength over land and has been downgraded to a tropical depression, but forecasters are saying it could still dump up to six inches of rain in some areas as it continues to make its way up through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. Isolated tornadoes are still possible Monday in central and northern Alabama, central and northern Mississippi, and the western Tennessee Valley. According to the National Weather Service, the storm now has sustained winds of only 35 mph and is moving slowly northwest at about 14 mph. But residents in the southeastern US shouldn’t start breathing easy quite yet. The fifth tropical depression of the season is developing over the Atlantic Ocean, and it could become Tropical Storm Emily sometime Monday. The storm currently has sustained winds of 30 mph, and is moving at about 12 mph across thousands of miles of open sea, where it is expected to gather strength as it heads west.