On Monday, the hurricane hustled up the coast of Georgia and into the Carolinas. Considering - or, perhaps, in spite of - the lack of any co-ordinated federal assistance efforts, local and regional rescue operations were dealing with the catastrophe admirably. Weather experts were still trying to figure out what caused such an unparalled storm to materialize three months before the beginning of the 'official' hurricane season. The communities closest to the sea were the most desolated. Hilton Head Island, Edisto Beach, and Isle of Palms were all devastated, practically wiped off the map. Georgetown , South Carolina was virtually gone. Dozens of deaths were reported in Myrtle Beach. The North Carolina towns of Hampstead, Surf City, and North Topsail Beach were decimated. Even Jacksonville, South Carolina was hit hard, reporting "hundreds" of deaths. The Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base was virtually non-existent anymore. Ironically, much of the base poopulation had just shipped out for Iran three months before, as the Bush administration planned strategic invasions of Iran. Only a skeleton crew of instructors and base administrative personnel remained, waiting for a new batch of recruits to arrive sometime in late March.
Scientists were being interviewed as some enterprising young telecasters tried to pin the blame for this awful storm on the ill effects of global warming. While many in the scientific community subscribed to the theory that global warming was instrumental in creating more intense - and more frequent - hurricanes, none of those interviewed would specifically pinpoint global warming as the one and only reason for this unprecedented, awesome anomaly.
Thanks to the 'round-the-clock dedication of O.U.T.R.A.G.E. technicians, the St, Kitts headquarters was now back in full operation, other than cosmetic repairs. A press conference was held to announce the results of the votes on twenty-five resolutions that had been presented on the ballot. In each instance, voters had unanimously voted in favor of each resolution, often by a margin of more than 90% "Yea" votes and 10% "Nay" votes. Voters' results were also posted in a news release that had been distributed to the media, so many citizens were already aware of the outcome. Unfortunately, that "big news" was overshadowed by the news of the hurricane, so many other voters were still not aware of the finaly tallies.
As the hurricane continued to hug the coastline, weather specialists started speculating on what would happen when it stormed into major cities like Virginia Beach, Washington, DC and Baltimore. Clean-ups from the January explosions were still going on in those metroplitan communities, and local civil service workers' energy had already been "taxed to the max", as one young newscaster put it a few weeks ago during a human-interest segment on how rescuers were coping with their jobs.
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. reports continued non-stop, as did the unamed hurricane.