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Some find safety on battleship
Strong winds no match for USS Alabama, but park does sustain some damage
Thursday, September 16, 2004
By GEORGE WERNETH
Staff Reporter
One-month-old Emily Paige Phillips slept like a baby through the howling winds of Hurricane Ivan on Wednesday night on board the shaking USS Alabama at Battleship Memorial Park.
"She woke up one time to eat and then went back to sleep," said her mother, Teresa Phillips, 31, an employee of the park who rode out the storm on the battleship with her infant as well as her husband, Cameron Phillips, 33, and their other two children, William, 12, and Jade, 9. They were among about 40 people -- employees and their family members -- who were on board because they believed the World War II battleship was the safest place to be in a hurricane. Some of them had experienced storms big and small on the Alabama before this one.
Ivan ripped part of the roof off the park's Aircraft Pavilion, which houses 13 vintage military aircraft, but the aircraft inside survived the storm in good shape, Mike Thompson, a park official, reported. Thompson said the winds severely damaged a Huey UH-1 helicopter that was part of the Lower Alabama Vietnam Veterans Memorial outside at the park.
Thompson, who overseas the aircraft exhibits, said the wind pulled the moorings out of the ground that secured a Coast Guard Albatross airplane on display outdoors and turned it sideways.
One wind gauge on the ship broke after registering a gust of 105 mph, said Thompson, who said he heard that another gauge on the vessel recorded a 112-mph gust. "You could feel the whole superstructure of the ship move when a big gust would hit."
Officials said it could be as late as Monday before the park can reopen and said water was several feet deep Thursday morning at its entrance on the Causeway.
Teresa Phillips said her two school-age children watched cartoons on board the 680-foot-long warship until they fell asleep. She said she felt perfectly safe on 80 million-pound Alabama, which has survived the worst hurricanes Mother Nature could hurl at the area over the past 40 years.
The battleship -- which is mired in 20 feet of Mobile Bay mud and is surrounded by a cofferdam -- can survive a 12-foot tidal surge in good shape, said Bill Tunnell, the park director. Such a tidal surge did not develop and the battleship once again came through with flying colors, Tunnell said.
Bill Parsons, Tunnell's crew chief, who had already ridden out Hurricanes Opal, Elena and Georges on the battleship, said, "Really, it's not bad but you can hear the wind howling and you can see the water rising. I think it's more of a mental thing. It plays on your mind."
As for hunkering down in the battleship during a hurricane, Parsons said, "There's no safer place than this."
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