Washington area residents prepared for the worst of Irene’s howling winds and rising waters Saturday, sandbagging homes, pulling boats out of the Potomac and rushing to stockpile water, food, candles, flashlights and batteries. Just hours before the brunt of the storm hit the D.C. region late Saturday, nervous shoppers scrambled to grab emergency supplies as rain pelted the region.
“I’m planning like this is the storm of all storms,” said Alicia Wilson, 21, of Northwest, as she dragged two massive cases of bottled water onto a dolly. “You never know how long you could be stuck in the dark. I’m ready to wait this thing out for a while.”
But Mark Rice, a “lifelong Floridian” looked on in amusement as Wilson and others scurried to fill their homes with survival kits of sorts.
“I guess the world is ending,” the Arlington resident said sarcastically. “A few drops of rain and everybody’s spine apparently melts.”
The situation was not a laughing matter in Annapolis, where Marylanders felt the wrath of Irene as early as Saturday afternoon.
The winds kicked up the water in the normally-calm Chesapeake Bay, sending waves crashing onto the sand where residents had been sunbathing earlier in the week.
John and Valerie Clegg, who were evacuated Saturday afternoon from their home on close-by Kent Island, decided to stay open for business along the Broadneck Peninsula.
“The mail must go and it will go out,” said Valerie Clegg, who along with her husband, has owned The Artist Flat General Store and Post Office for more than 20 years. “We’ve been busier today than expected and we expect to be open tomorrow despite the weather.”
The District of Columbia and low-lying Alexandria handed out a total of 23,000 sandbags between Friday and Saturday.
In Alexandria, property managers and owners barricaded waterfront properties with sandbag borders, while others took even more precautions.
They were measuring plastic sheets and putting up protective plywood at The Creamery, Lynne Lindsey’s Old Town ice cream shop. The business suffered $100,000 in damage when it was flooded by four feet of water when Hurricane Isabel struck the area in 2003.
“We’ve seen a lot of flooding, but that was one I don’t want to see again,” she said. “You don’t know until you actually see it what a shock it is.”
A few blocks down, Eileen Demaree was pulling her boat out of the river; she said most of the other boat club members were doing the same, expecting Irene to be as bad as Isabel.
D.C. residents rushed from store to store in search of flashlights, batteries and other essentials to help them survive the “multiple days” that Pepco predicted it would take to restore power.
Chinatown resident Liz Bernstein was trying to buy a flashlight Friday at Ace Hardware at 14th and P Streets, but the store was sold out.
“So far the track record of how D.C. deals with natural disasters is not good,” she said. “So that’s why I’m worried.”
Examiner Staff Writer Sara Carter contributed to this report.
