As Hurricane Bonnie swept toward the North Carolina coast Wednesday morning, federal agencies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Navy stepped up preparations to deal with the storm's wrath.
National Weather Service forecasters continued to track the storm, hoping to accurately predict its path. NWS is sending out public advisories every few hours.
The Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Norfolk, Va., also tracked the hurricane, as the Navy sent 60 ships docked at Norfolk out to sea to ride out the storm. Another 20 vessels from Mayport, Fla., five from Kings Bay, Ga. and one from Charleston, S.C. took to the sea or inland waterways.
Aircraft at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va. were squeezed into hangars on Tuesday. Planes at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, South Carolina's Seymour-Johnson, McEntire, Charleston, Shaw Air Bases, and Virginia's Langley Air Force Base have been relocated.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinated with state and local officials, emergency response teams, and volunteer organizations as hundreds of thousands of residents evacuated coastal communities yesterday and today. As FEMA deployed an advance response team to Raleigh, N.C., representatives of the 12 primary federal disaster response agencies monitored activities from FEMA headquarters in Washington.
Since Sunday, FEMA's regional operations center in Atlanta has been operating 24 hours a day. Hurricane teams have been deployed to North Carolina and South Carolina emergency operations centers.
The Army Corps of Engineers is shipping generators to Ft. Bragg, N.C., which will serve as the staging area for deploying disaster response resources. The Energy Department is mobilizing personnel to help with restoration of power, if necessary.
Federal agencies also took to the Web to spread the word on hurricane-related activities. FEMA, the Weather Service and the Navy posted Bonnie alerts on their Web sites. The National Hurricane Center's site was so busy that by Wednesday morning, the center had posted the following note on its home page: "Due to unprecedented demand, the National Hurricane Center Web site is currently overloaded."
Federal disaster teams may have to remain on alert well after Bonnie goes back out to sea. Hurricane Danielle, which was about 750 miles east of the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean this morning, may follow the same path Bonnie has taken.
"The problem we will probably get into at some point if it continues this long duration is people," FEMA Director James Lee Witt told reporters this morning. "Our staff here and the agencies here, all the federal agencies that are here, they've been activated since Sunday. And some of the states have been activated since Sunday. And so, it's going to be a trying time for all of us."
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