Tropical depression still wreaks havoc
Ernesto weakened to a tropical depression Friday, but the storm still packed enough punch to dump more than half a foot of rain, knock out power to more than 300,000 customers and force hundreds of people from their homes.
And it was far from finished. On the eve of the Labor Day weekend, the storm prompted flash flood watches for wide sections of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and central New York.
At least one person died when a massive tree crushed a modular home in Gloucester, Va. The storm was blamed for at least two traffic deaths in Virginia and one in North Carolina, where it swirled ashore late Thursday.
North Carolina got the heaviest initial rainfall, with 8 to 12 inches across much of the eastern part of the state. Parts of western Virginia got 6 inches by midmorning.
Havana
Chavez visits Castro for the cameras
Cuban leader Fidel Castro, looking notably better than he did when last seen almost three weeks ago, happily greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a brief visit aired on state television Friday.
“Brother!” the 80-year-old Castro said from his sickbed, his face lighting up as Chavez entered the room Friday where he was recuperating, and gave him a warm embrace.
Chavez has now visited Castro three times since the Cuban leader announced on July 31 that he had undergone intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his brother, Raul Castro, the defense minister. The specifics of Castro’s ailment and the nature of his surgery have been treated as a state secret.
Dressed in red pajamas, Castro appeared much more animated on the video than in those made when Chavez made his first post-surgery visit to the Cuban leader on Aug. 13, his 80th birthday.
Lexington, Ky.
Plane crash victim’s family sues airline
The family of a woman killed when Comair Flight 5191 took off on the wrong runway and crashed in flames sued the airline Friday, blaming it for the nation’s deadliest airplane disaster in five years.
The lawsuit accuses Comair of negligence and says passenger Rebecca L. Adams suffered “conscious pain and suffering” when the plane went down Sunday morning and quickly burned with 49 people still inside.
The only survivor was the co-pilot, who remained hospitalized Friday but was upgraded from critical to serious condition.
The regional jet had left the gate before dawn with 50 people aboard. The pilots mistakenly turned onto the wrong runway, one too short for the twin-engine plane, and tried to take off. The plane crashed in a field just beyond Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport.