Residents Get Glimpse Of Damage Hurricane Opal Turning Out To Be Third Costliest For U.S.

Residents of areas hit hardest by Hurricane Opal pleaded in vain Friday for a look at what the storm did to their homes. Some who flew over the area burst into tears at what they saw.

“Let me stay in my home! I don’t have anywhere to go!” Lorraine Brown screamed at an official as she waited with nearly 1,000 other Pensacola Beach residents for permits to visit their homes for eight hours today. “Why do we have to stand here in line to go to our own homes?”

Pensacola Beach and next-door Navarre Beach, on a thin barrier island that took the hurricane’s full force Wednesday evening, remained closed Friday as areas farther from the storm’s center reopened to residents.

Authorities said they were limiting today’s access to those with permits to avoid clogging ruined streets with traffic.

Also closed were the eastern end of Santa Rosa Island, near Fort Walton Beach, and the Holiday Isle section of Destin, where search-and-rescue teams went door to door to account for about two dozen people who hadn’t been heard from since the storm.

Searchers found no one, dead or alive, in the ruins by nightfall and planned to end their search today, said Hank Christen, emergency management director for Okaloosa County. Mark Steinman, the county’s manager for emergency medical service, said the unaccounted-for people may have simply left after the hurricane because of damage to their condominiums.

The hurricane roared ashore with 144 mph wind gusts, killing 18 people in four states. It caused an estimated $1.8 billion in damage to insured property along the Gulf of Mexico, making it the third-costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

Some people who took to a helicopter to see what was left of Navarre Beach and Pensacola Beach burst into tears, pilot Bill Pullum said.

“I certainly did,” Mary Rebholtz said. She was inspecting houses for several friends, including some who suffered damage from Hurricane Erin two months ago. “One of my friends just got his roof on, and it’s gone again.”

Gov. Lawton Chiles, who took a ground tour, said Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach were closed for a simple reason.

“The water is gone, the sewer is gone, the roads are gone, the power is gone,” he said. “Unless those are restored, it doesn’t do you much good to get out there.”

But Kay Bramlett, after a view from Pullum’s helicopter, said the governor didn’t understand.

“I just want to go out there and go through and try to save the things like family photographs,” said Bramlett, who was in Dallas on business when the storm hit. “If it starts raining before we get in, things that survived could be ruined.”

More than 600 law enforcement officers and National Guardsmen patrolled the area to protect property from looters. Fourteen looters were arrested between Thursday night and Friday night in the Panama City Beach area, said Bay County Sheriff Lt. Jerry Girvin.

An additional 3,000 Guardsmen helped out at hospitals, shelters and nursing homes. Thirty-one aircraft were being used to ferry in food and other supplies.

Power was still out to more than 1.1 million people. Two-thirds of the outages were in Alabama, where entire towns were without electricity.