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Sept. 15, 2004, 1:02PM Evacuees crowd Mississippi highwaysAssociated Press
FLORENCE, Miss. -- Fleeing northward from Hurricane Ivan, Angela Zimmerman and her mother and son, evacuees from Mobile, Ala., spent the night in their minivan somewhere in the woods of south Mississippi, then awoke early today and formed a prayer circle.
"God's going to protect us. We prayed this morning before we left, so we know that's taken care of," Zimmerman, 33, said at a gas station about 20 miles south of Jackson. Northbound U.S. 49 between the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Jackson was bumper-to-bumper today with people who had fled coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Hotels were booked solid as far north as Memphis, Tenn., nearly 325 miles northwest of Mobile. Debra Smith and Gina Klatt, both of Mobile, Ala., were traveling with their sons to Dallas -- the first place they could find a hotel room. Smith, 48, said she spent Tuesday night sleeping in her car in a Wal-Mart parking lot in south Mississippi. "The car's trashed. It's pretty much stuffed with clothes and makeup," she said this morning. Klatt's son Nicholas is 18 months old -- and he wasn't a happy traveler, crying at a Waffle House just south of Jackson while his mother described her travels from their home at a Coast Guard station in Mobile. Klatt, whose husband is stationed in the Arctic, is from New Jersey and was experiencing her first hurricane scare. She said neighbors helped her board up her house. "I don't think I'm going to have a house to go home to because it's Category 4 (hurricane) and it's pretty bad," said Klatt, 34. Nicholas' crying brought tears to his mother's eyes. "You can replace your house but I can't replace my son," she said.
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