“The pleas that we’re making to you, the warnings that we’re giving you, they’re serious,” he said during a news conference on Tuesday. Mayor Sandy Stimpson urged people in low-lying areas known to be flood-prone to move to higher ground. Over the last day or so, some longtime Mobile residents said that Hurricane Sally, with its dangerous and stubborn procrastination, reminded them of Hurricane Danny in 1997, which also moved at a crawling pace while dumping rain for hours, setting off mudslides and catastrophic river flooding in South Alabama. George Ketchum, who helped bring reliable drinking water to the city, burbled along with hardly anyone to see it.
In Bienville Square, the 19th-century fountain honoring Dr. Traffic lights on wires tossed and shook. Violent winds animated the arms of old oak trees. The proof on Tuesday was in its near-empty downtown streets as night fell and the city waited for slow-moving Hurricane Sally to make its way ashore.īars and restaurants that featured signs prompted by the coronavirus pandemic (“No Handshaking,” one declared) were now sandbagged in anticipation of the new crisis coming up from the south. There is a profound respect for the power of the weather in the 318-year-old port city of Mobile, Ala., where hurricanes have consistently been a fact of life.