Officials prepare in case storm comes through area

By Alicia Rimel

Published: September 3, 2008

Waynesboro city workers are bracing for potential heavy rains this weekend as Tropical Storm Hanna rumbles toward the East Coast.
The city has 9,000 to 10,000 sandbags on hand in case the storm charts a course toward the Shenandoah Valley, officials said Wednesday. Forecasters aren’t so sure that will happen.
“We’re watching Hanna moving up the southeast coast, tracking through east North Carolina and maybe Southeastern Virginia,” said Chris Strong, warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “It’s that track and maybe a little further east where we might see some rain in Waynesboro, but we wouldn’t expect much more than that.”
The National Weather Service forecasts that rains will arrive Friday, hanging over the area through Saturday. Friday amounts are forecasted at about 1 inch. Saturday amounts have yet to be forecasted.
City officials said they are ready in the event the heavy rains expected elsewhere fall here.
“We’re out checking all the trouble areas, getting sand in – plenty of sandbags – clearing all the debris out of catch spaces ... we’ve been doing that most of this week,” said Pete Fitzgerald, street supervisor for the Waynesboro Public Works Department.
The River City has become just that before.
Main Street was a lake of water in September 2003, when Hurricane Isabel brought torrential downpours to the area. The South River swelled to 13 feet, 3½ feet above flood stage.
Flooding caused by the hurricane damaged up to 30 businesses, knocked out power for almost 20,000 of 53,000 Dominion Power customers and forced people living low-lying areas to evacuate their homes. State health officials advised people to boil drinking water for five days after the storm.
So far, the city has been spared during this hurricane season from flooding. Tropical Storm Fay brought steady rains, but no downpours. The trend should continue this weekend, Strong said.
“It’s still three days away, so we’ll keep an eye on it to make sure that it doesn’t do anything erratic, but we expect the storm to stay far enough east that we wouldn’t have anything too bad,” Strong said. “Actually, if [Waynesboro] got a little rain, that would not be a bad thing.
“We wouldn’t expect anything bad, flooding-wise. We expect the rain to be more of a gentle, beneficial rain than the flooding type of rain.”
But hurricane season is not over. Tropical storms Ike and Josephine are building in the Atlantic.
“They could [affect the area], but they’re well out in the Atlantic – generally tracking across the tropics,” Strong said. “Even if they did get up here, it wouldn’t be until mid to later next week.”