Hurricane Hanna eyes Georgia coast

Hanna became the fourth hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season Monday afternoon and headed toward the Georgia coast with maximum sustained winds at 75 mph.

Though a storm-forecasting model had Hanna arriving in Savannah on Friday, officials said the storm could shift and make landfall anywhere from the Carolinas south to Florida.

“We’re watching Hanna, talking to state partners,” Ginger Edwards, director of the FEMA Regional Response Coordination Center, said Sunday. “Our Atlantic states are paying attention.”

Brandon Bolinski, FEMA’s hurricane program manager, told representatives from the military, relief organizations and other federal agencies in a Sunday night briefing winds from Hurricane Gustav are “imposing a shear on [Tropical Storm] Hanna. As long as Gustav is around, Hanna can’t get going.”

He said once Gustav has moved over land and dissipated, Hanna, now in the Atlantic east of the Bahamas, should gather strength and “start moving,” most likely on Wednesday.

“It will be formidable,” Bolinski said. “We’ll probably be turning our attention to it quick.”

Hurricane Hanna has already begun to churn the ocean waters off the Southeast coast. On Sunday afternoon, numerous rescues by lifeguards were carried out along the North Carolina coast and lifeguards along the Georgia coast reported several rip currents.

Meanwhile, two more systems developing in the Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between northern Africa and Cuba, and Bolinski said one of them could be significant.