As Hurricane Francine pushed northeast through the Gulf of Mexico, preparations were underway in Mississippi, a state with only a short coastline — but one that has been repeatedly battered by hurricanes in the past.
Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency. School districts announced closures on Wednesday and Thursday. People flocked to grocery stores for snacks and drinking water, and one liquor store employee said the rush of customers matched Thanksgiving.
Outside of the Emergency Operations Center in Hancock County, on the border with Louisiana, inmates at the county jail shoveled sand from a pile almost as high as their chests on Tuesday afternoon. They poured the sand into white bags, tied them up and loaded them onto pickup trucks for residents to take home.
Danie Ladner, 56, and her husband, Gregory, 67, took 11, planning to set them up around the front door of their house in nearby Dedeaux. They rode out Hurricane Katrina there in 2005, but said they wouldn’t stay if another storm of that strength threatened the area. Katrina came ashore in Louisiana and Mississippi as a Category 3 hurricane, with wind gusts of more than 120 miles per hour.
Francine isn’t expected to strengthen beyond a Category 2 hurricane. Still, the Ladners packed up a truck with clothes and stocked up on gas for the generator. “We’re not taking this for granted,” Mr. Ladner said.
His wife added: “We don’t ever say, ‘It’s just a 1 or a 2. We’ll be fine.’”
Inside the operations center, officials huddled around a computer, waiting for the National Hurricane Center to release its next advisory. The squat, stucco building replaced a previous center that was flooded out by Katrina’s 28-foot storm surge.
Vic Johnson, the county’s roads manager, said that he was preparing for Mississippi to bear more of Francine’s impacts than people had expected when the storm first appeared far to the south. But he wasn’t too concerned.
“It’s not going to be a terrible one,” he said, adding that he expects downed trees. His department will be in charge of fixing that, sending workers out into the middle of the storm to clear the roads so that other vehicles, including emergency services, can pass.
This will be Mr. Johnson’s last hurricane season: He is retiring in January. His first was 2005. Katrina hit about nine months after he joined the county.
“I got broke in right,” he said. “Or wrong.”
The post With Strong Memories of Katrina, Mississippi Braces for Francine appeared first on New York Times.