Ivan Kills Over 19!
GULF SHORES, Alabama (CNN) -- Ivan, a storm that has killed nearly 80 people, has lost its hurricane status, but it remains a troublemaker for the country's interior and East Coast as a tropical storm.
The weather system continues to hover over the eastern part of the country, dumping several inches of rain on an area stretching from Ohio to New York and covering nearly the entire state of Pennsylvania.
With residents in Gulf Coast states facing homes sheared from their pilings, power outages, floodwaters and looters, authorities urged evacuees to delay returning to assess damage until they receive an all-clear decree.
More than 1.8 million customers in six states were without power Friday, officials said, and analysts have given preliminary damage estimates ranging from $2 billion to $10 billion.
Ivan left 60 dead in the Caribbean before it blasted U.S. shores early Thursday near the Alabama resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and ripped into the western Florida Panhandle city of Pensacola.
"I've been down here 24 years, and this is the worst I've seen," said Sgt. Al Fryer, a Pensacola police spokesman.
"All beachfront and everything on the waterfont is devastated, and the damage is extreme," he said.
Cartographers will need to redraw maps of Gulf Shores, officials said, because waves swallowed as much as a half-mile to a mile of the coastline.
The U.S. death toll from Ivan, which made landfall with 130 mph (209 kph)winds, stood at 19 -- seven of them in the Florida Panhandle, where the eastern edge of the storm spawned tornadoes well before the eye made landfall.
Six died in North Carolina. Two of those were residents of a home that got swept down a mountain by a mudslide, Gov. Mike Easley said.
Debbie Crane of the North Carolina Emergency Management Agency said that the state is experiencing heavy flooding west of Asheville and that many roads are impassable.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency blamed the storm for three deaths: an electrocuted utility worker, a 4-year-old swept away by floodwaters and a person killed by a fallen tree. (Storm impact on states)
In Alabama, a volunteer firefighter died after his vehicle hit a downed tree, said George Grabryan, Lauderdale County Emergency Management Agency 911 director.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency reported two storm-related deaths, both men. One died when a tree limb fell while he was helping a neighbor remove another tree limb from a house, and the other died from electrocution as he tried to take an antenna off a power line.
Tornadoes caused six of Florida's seven deaths in the Panhandle town of Blountstown, west of Tallahassee, and the spring break mecca of Panama City Beach.
A tornado destroyed the Blountstown mobile home of Santana Sullivan and her fiancé, Chris Ammonds.
They returned home to find "a clear lot," she said. (Full story)
Among the items lost in their home were the wedding rings Sullivan and Ammonds planned to exchange next month.
In Santa Rosa County, emergency management officials said a young girl in Milton died when a tree fell on her house.
The fate of a truck driver whose rig plunged off a damaged bridge into Escambia Bay, near Pensacola, remains unknown.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said officials had been concerned about looting in the hardest-hit areas around Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, which have been heavily developed since Hurricane Frederic in 1979. "But unless you looted out of a boat, it would be very difficult to do," Riley said.
Ivan was reduced to a tropical depression late Thursday after sweeping into north-central Alabama as a tropical storm, knocking out power as far north as Birmingham and Atlanta, Georgia.
President Bush declared major disaster areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, making federal funding and aid available to residents of those states affected by the storm.
Bush canceled a Sunday campaign event in New Hampshire and instead will tour the affected regions of Alabama and Florida, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Island flooded
In Gulf Shores, the Alabama Gulf Shores Zoo was in shambles, with the waterlogged ground littered with pieces of wood and other debris. Most of the animals were evacuated before the storm, but authorities were looking for several deer and six alligators that hadn't been evacuated and have been seen wading -- or swimming -- around the flooded island.
Among them is "Chuckie," a 1,000-pound, 12-foot-long reptile, and zoo officials spent three hours fruitlessly searching for the animal by canoe Thursday afternoon.
"We cannot send people in to assess more of the damages until we find the big boy," one zoo worker said.
Across the mouth of Mobile Bay, authorities reported Dauphin Island had sustained extensive damage to structures over the entire island, said Bruce Baughman, Alabama Emergency Management Agency director. The island also was hit hard by Hurricane Frederic, "and as with 1979, they've got sand covering the entire island."
CNN's Susan Candiotti, Sara Dorsey, Kathleen Koch, Rick Sanchez and Gary Tuchman contributed to this report.
