Dennis, Now a Tropical Storm, Heads Back Toward N.C.

KITTY HAWK, N.C. — Dennis began plodding back toward North Carolina on Tuesday, this time as a tropical storm, raising fears among the vacationers and residents who had just started to return to the rain-lashed coast.

“It’s not done, and we realize in the next 72 hours it could pose a problem,” said Dorothy Holt, spokeswoman for the Dare County government.

The National Hurricane Center downgraded the hurricane to a tropical storm at 11 p.m. EDT, but warned that the storm’s unpredictable winds were just short of hurricane strength.

Forecasters predicted Dennis, about 100 miles east of Cape Hatteras with 70-mph winds, would move slowly west and then turn southwest.

That would take it along the same path--but in reverse--that it followed when it crept along North Carolina’s coast Monday without coming ashore.

On Tuesday night, Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. requested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency declare a state of emergency.

As Dennis drifted westward at 3 mph, gale-force winds and 14-foot waves lashed the Outer Banks. Hatteras Island--the longest of the 50-mile stretch of barrier islands--was without power and off-limits to traffic because beach sand and water had made roads impassable.

A mandatory evacuation order was issued for residents of North Carolina’s South Nags Head and Kitty Hawk living along the beach road because of threatening waves.

At its height, the storm was packing sustained winds above 100 mph. It sideswiped the Carolinas over the weekend and veered off to sea early Monday. After stalling for more than 24 hours, it began to drift back toward land.

Hurricane warnings were lowered to a tropical storm warning from Cape Lookout, N.C., north to Chincoteague, Va. A gale warning extended farther north to Great Egg Inlet, N.J.

Dennis was blamed for two deaths from a car collision in North Carolina on Monday and a surfer’s death on Saturday in St. Augustine Beach, Fla.

Thirty miles of North Carolina 12, the lone highway along the cape, was closed. About 8,000 residents were without power.

A boat carried groceries Tuesday to Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, said Bob Woody, spokesman for Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Vacationers from North Carolina to Virginia were left crestfallen by the storm.

“I always come down here this week,” said Derek Pietro of Collegeville, Pa., who packed his family up and left their rented Kitty Hawk beach house as water poured under it at high tide. “This is the first time I’ve gotten nailed. If it’s stalled, it’s going to be miserable.”

In Virginia Beach, waves crashed into the boardwalk and beaches were closed to swimmers.