4Him’s Kirk Sullivan In Free Concert Today In Molino
August 30, 2015
Kirk Sullivan of the award-winning Contemporary Christian group 4Him will be in concert this afternoon, August 30 at Highland Baptist Church in Molino.
4Him made music history with a Grammy nomination, eight Dove awards, three gold albums and 25 number singles.
This afternoon’s Kirk Sullivan concert at Highland Baptist, 6240 Highway 95A, begins at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free but a love offering will be accepted.
The group 4Him is reuniting this fall for the 25 Years 4Him Tour.
Put A Ring On It: Tate’s State Champion Softball Team Receives Rings
August 30, 2015
The Tate Lady Aggies won the Class 7A softball state championship last spring, and they were back in the spotlight Friday night as they received their state championship rings from Principal Rick Shackle and Escambia School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas. Photos by Jennifer Repine for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Mostly Sunny Monday
August 30, 2015
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Tonight: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1am. Patchy fog after 4am. Otherwise, partly cloudy, with a low around 68. Calm wind.
Monday: Patchy fog before 7am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 91. North wind around 5 mph.
Monday Night: Patchy fog after 1am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 68. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph.
Tuesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 94. Northwest wind around 5 mph.
Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 69. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Wednesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 94. Northwest wind around 5 mph.
Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71. Southwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Thursday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90. Calm wind becoming northwest around 5 mph.
Thursday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71. Calm wind.
Friday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 89.
Friday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71.
Saturday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 88.
Saturday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71.
Sunday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 89.
Wahoos Lose To Jackson
August 30, 2015
Pensacola managed three hits Saturday and dropped the second game of the five-game series against Jackson, 4-0, at The Ballpark in Jackson.
After five Blue Wahoos recorded multi-hit games and the club pounded out 11 hits in the opener, the General’s Misael Siverio gave up a season-best one hit in six innings of work and struck out five to improve to 5-11 on the year.
The Pensacola loss and Mississippi victory means the Blue Wahoos lead over the Braves fell to half a game in the South Division with eight to play. Pensacola moved to 35-27 in the second half of the Southern League, while Mississippi improved to 34-27.
The Blue Wahoos are trying to make the postseason for the first time since the team began in 2012. It would be the first time a Cincinnati Reds Double-A affiliate has been in the playoffs since Chattanooga in 2006 — the longest drought of any Southern League affiliate. Chattanooga lost to Huntsville in the first round.
In the eighth inning, Jackson added an insurance run to go up, 4-0, when first baseman John Lara singled to left field to score DH Guillermo Pimental from third.
Generals left fielder Jabari Henry hit a two-run homer, his ninth of the season, to left center field in the fifth inning that put Jackson ahead, 3-0.
Jackson got its first run in the fourth when Lara doubled in shortstop Tyler Smith.
After four bad starts in a row in which he failed to pitch five innings, Pensacola starter Sal Romano had a strong outing, allowing five hits in six innings, walking one and striking out two. Part of the problem was he had walked 10 batters in 12 innings. However, Romano earned the loss against Jackson and is 0-4 since moving up to Double-A Pensacola.
Pensacola right fielder Jesse Winker went 1-4, hitting safely in six straight games. But he got tossed from the game in his last at bat arguing a strike out call. Winker has hit in 20 of his 25 games this month and is batting .368 (32-87) in August and .313 in the second half.
The Blue Wahoos two other hits came when third baseman Mejias-Brean doubled in two at bats and second baseman Ryan Wright, who was 1-4, singled in the ninth inning.
Tropical Storm Erika Has Dissipated
August 29, 2015
As of 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Tropical Storm Erika has dissipated with winds of 35 miles per hour.
However, the National Hurricane Center says people in the Bahamas, eastern and central Cuba and southern Florida should monitor the remnants of Erika. The remnants are expected to move near the coast of eastern and central Cuba today and tonight and into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.
50 Percent Chance Of Saturday Showers
August 29, 2015
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Saturday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 86. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph in the morning.
Saturday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 69. Southeast wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 91. Calm wind becoming east around 5 mph.
Sunday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly clear, with a low around 68. Calm wind.
Monday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Sunny, with a high near 93. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph.
Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 73. Calm wind.
Tuesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 92. Northeast wind around 5 mph.
Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73. Northeast wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
Wednesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 91.
Wednesday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74.
Thursday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 91.
Thursday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73.
Friday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90.
10th Anniversary: Remembering Katrina
August 29, 2015
On the Monday morning of Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines with winds topping out at a devastating 155 mph.
Many residents had either evacuated the coastal zone or were hunkered down ahead of the strong Category 5 storm.
Some hurricane-hardened folks, however, stayed in their homes lulled into thinking Katrina would not be that bad as it began weakening – its winds dropping slightly as it approached the coast from 175 mph just 24 hours earlier.
Darrell Herron, a Power System coordinator Sr. and his family, living on an inlet about three miles north of the Biloxi waterfront a decade ago, were among them. He and his wife Lori (pictured before Katrina) had survived a number of hurricanes unscathed through the years including Hurricane Camille’s wrath in 1969, which devastated the Mississippi coast with a 24.6 foot-storm surge and the highest hurricane wind speeds ever recorded, at 190 mph.
As Katrina spun closer, the Herrons, including their 16-year-old son, Darrell Jr., were cooking breakfast and watching storm news on TV and the approaching weather from their waterfront porch. They were feeling confident in the safety of their new home, built two years earlier on a mound of dirt at Camille’s storm surge level and upgraded to exceed hurricane codes.
All along the Mississippi Coast hundreds of people, like the Herron family, would soon be caught off guard by Katrina and find themselves fighting for their lives and realizing that you can never underestimate a hurricane.
“You never know what a storm has in it, until it gets to you,” said Darrell, while sitting in the Pensacola home he moved into a year ago when he transferred from Mississippi Power to Gulf Power.
No two alike
“The property we lived on was the same piece of property my wife’s grandmother and her mother was born on,” he said. “They had known what the water had done since the 1940s. We had built to the Camille storm-surge level. That was the benchmark, the highest water level ever. We didn’t think we’d ever have another Camille.”
They had made all the routine preparations for Katrina, and then some. Windows were covered in plywood. Vehicles moved into the garage or on the highest ground. Extra food and generator fuel to last days and even share with family and neighbors who might become displaced by the hurricane was stockpiled.
“We made coffee, talked and thought we’re just going to ride it out,” Darrell said.
They were not even alarmed by the choppy bay water slowly creeping up to their house as Katrina’s eye approached Pass Christian, Miss., pushing a storm surge inland for miles.
“When the hot tub busted through the French doors, we knew things were getting bad,” Darrell said. “My wife said, ‘It’s time to get into the attic.’ Things were floating around the house. We didn’t want to get hurt.”
Even as they climbed into the dark attic with their Boston terrier, Baby, they were thinking they’d be climbing back out soon and mopping up water and drying out their belongings.
“Storms don’t last long. We’ve been through this before,” said Darrell, recalling their train of thought that morning.
They had no clue they’d feel Katrina’s lashing for nearly 10 hours.
“The wind was getting worse. Friends and family started calling us checking on us and telling us to get out,” Darrell said. “Once there was two feet of water in the house that meant the water was 16 to 17 feet deep in the yard. There was no way we could leave.”
He stopped taking calls about 9:30 a.m. that morning to conserve his cell phone battery. The power was out by this time and the only light shown dimly through the attic stairway opening.
“My wife is crying; my son is upset. They’re scared and shocked,” said Darrell, looking down as if the memory was painful to recall.
Fighting for their lives
Then over the constant roar of Katrina’s winds, they heard something even louder. Suddenly, it seemed like the air around them was sucked out through the roof soffits and insulation swirled around them like snow in a blizzard.
A tornado was pulling the roof apart.
“I hollered, ‘Head for the light!’ We needed to get out of there. The light was the roof coming apart,” Herron said.
In a split second, their security vanished when the roof disappeared and they landed in the deep, choppy, debris-filled water in the middle of the hurricane. Darrell and his son found temporary footing on what would turn out to be a piece of the roof that peeled off.
“My son said, ‘I can’t find Mom.’ We started hollering for her. Then her foot popped through the water, trash and debris. My son just grabbed it and pulled her up.”
The memory of that moment is still hard for Lori to recall.
“When I was under the water, I was face up under something very large,” said Lori, a first-grade teacher at Global Learning Center. “I remember trying to push up and turn over. Nothing worked. I remember thinking I’m 37 years old and not ready to die. I wasn’t through living. I remember being more scared than I have ever been in my life.”
The dazed family went into survival mode. All they could see through the sheeting rain was choppy, wind-blown water in every direction. They treaded in water at least 21 feet deep. Seeing the metal roof from the work shed, they swam toward it. When it quickly slipped away in the water, the family swam to two nearby gum trees on which they clung for hours. Later they discovered one of Lori’s toes was nearly severed off, likely from running across the shed’s metal roof.
They felt lucky they were not killed in the ordeal. Darrell and Lori were in a tree about eight feet away from the tree Darrell Jr. wrapped himself around while Katrina’s deafening winds whipped debris around them.
“When we were sitting in the trees, all kinds of things – two-by-fours, anything floating – got picked up and flung by the wind. To keep from getting beaten to death, I tried to get Lori and Darrell Jr. to stay as close to the water as possible. The wind was blowing so hard, my son’s tank top was ripped off. Nothing was left but the strings around his arms where he was hanging on the tree.”
“At one time I heard my son scream,” Darrell said. “A piece of old, blue house foam about the size of a golf ball hit his back leaving a big whelp.”
As they fought to hang onto the trees, Darrell Jr. kept calling out to his dad, asking if he was all right.
“He kept hollering at me. ‘Are you all right?’ I hollered out, ‘I’m all right, son. Are you?’ He said, ‘I’m all right,’” Darrell said. “That’s when I had realized something was wrong with me.”
About that time, Darrell wiped his face and saw blood covering his hand.
“I looked down and saw blood dripping off the bottom of my shorts,” he said. “I felt around and put my hand on top of my head and felt my scalp rolled back. That’s what my son had been seeing; a big hunk of meat hanging off of my head.”
Even though he does not remember what happened, he suspects he scraped his head running out of the attic.
Worried he might lose too much blood and pass out; Darrell made the difficult decision to try to swim for a boat floating about 50 yards way on the edge of his property. It was a friend’s boat he was storing and had life jackets they could wear to possibly swim to his cabin-cruiser that was battered and damaged but still floating in the bay and tied with one line, about 80 yards away.
He swam through the debris, climbed into the friend’s boat and grabbed life jackets. Jumped back into the choppy water and swam back to his family in the trees.
“I just about had to drag Lori out of the trees because she was so scared,” he said.
Secured in life jackets, the family carefully made their way to a bigger boat where they could take refuge in the cabin, and find dry clothes and other supplies to hold them over until they could be rescued.
Once inside the cabin and as the hurricane continued to batter the area, the family did what they could for their injuries – Darrell’s head gash and a gash on Lori’s leg and her near severed pinky toe.
Waiting to be rescued
Even in the worse of situations, Darrell found a little levity.
“When we were sitting in the boat salon, my wife is laid up on the couch; her foot is bleeding and wrapped in the towel. My son is sitting quietly at the dinette table. Our dog is gone,” Darrell said. “I say to my wife, ‘Babe, we may have chosen poorly. We had a $25,000 boat and $600,000 house. We’re on the boat now.”
Around 3:30 p.m., nearly five hours since they were blown out of their attic, Lori kept saying she heard someone outside of the boat. Darrell assured her no one was there; she was just hearing the wind.
He finally decided to kick open the cabin door and ventured back out into the storm to check. There in the blinding wind and rain, he saw his brothers, Dwain and Carsten, waving and hollering at them from a 15-foot aluminum, bass boat bouncing on the waves.
The brothers had spent hours looking for a boat in which to search for their family.
“They came looking for us, thinking we’d be in the attic,” Darrell said. “They had chain saws and axes. They didn’t anticipate the house would be gone.”
Darrell and his family climbed into the 15-foot boat and were ferried to dry land and quickly taken to Ocean Springs Hospital, navigating around roads blocked by debris and National Guard troops. They were among the first injured to arrive at the hospital around 5 p.m.
Darrell and is son were treated and released. Though Lori initially was released from the Ocean Springs hospital, she ended up hospitalized for two weeks in a Georgia hospital when her wounds became infected.
After sending his family to stay with relatives, Darrell, with the help of his other family members began picking through the remnants of their home and searching debris piles for belongings.
All that remained of the house was part of the fireplace hearth, the slab and a single toilet. He did find his and Lori’s wedding rings and few pots and pans. He was able to retrieve still cold food out of his refrigerator he found stuck in debris yards from his home.
Lori’s greatest regret was not removing family treasures out of the house before the storm.
“Take everything that can be replaced with you, like baby books, pictures, mementos from your children’s childhood, things your parents and grandparents had given you and so on. The list is endless. I will always regret not putting those things in a safe place.”
They were however blessed with finding one precious item, by a stroke of luck, a few days after the storm passed. A neighbor showed up carrying a dog covered in mud that she had found in a debris pile.
“It was Baby,” Darrell said. “She was dazed, traumatized and dehydrated.”
Looking back, Darrell said if he could do anything differently, “Naturally, I would not have wanted my wife and child or dog there.”
He urges others to not underestimate any hurricane, saying, “Evacuate.”
Friday Night Football Finals
August 29, 2015
Here is a look at final scores from Friday night’s high school football games:
FLORIDA
- Crestview 47, Northview 20 [More...]
- Tate 38, Biloxi 7 [More...]
- Flomaton 55, Jay 26 [More...]
- Escambia 16, West Florida 7
- Choctaw 48, Gulf Breeze 32
- Navarre 57, Catholic 14
- Milton 20, Washington 14 OT
- Pine Forest 41, PHS 30
- Pace 49, Fort Walton 28
- Baker 26, Holmes County 14
ALABAMA
- Flomaton 55, Jay 26 [More...]
- W.S. Neal 42. Escambia County (Atmore) 14
- T.R. Miller 17, Tallassee 14
- Autauga Academy 28, Escambia Academy 18
Erika Continues Toward Florida; Scott Issues State Of Emergency
August 29, 2015
As of 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Tropical Storm Erika has dissipated with winds of 35 miles per hour. Click here for an update.
Previous Story:
With Tropical Storm Erika on a course to barrel into Florida, Gov. Rick Scott on Friday declared a state of emergency for the entire state.
The executive order pointed to updated forecasts from the National Hurricane Center indicating the storm likely will “travel up the spine of Florida’s peninsula.” Erika is now expected to remain a tropical storm, rather than turn into a more-powerful hurricane.
“Tropical Storm Erika poses a severe threat to the entire state of Florida and requires that timely precautions are taken to protect the communities, critical infrastructure and general welfare of this state,” part of the executive order said.
A five-day forecast “cone” on the National Hurricane Center website puts Florida directly in the path of the storm. That cone, which gives a broad picture of the projected track, suggests Erika could hit South Florida early Monday and then travel up the state.
A tropical storm, by definition, features wind speeds between 39 mph and 73 mph. Scott’s order said he was declaring that a “state of emergency exists in every county within the state of Florida.”
The declaration has a number of effects, such as triggering arrangements in which Florida can seek assistance from other states and the federal government. Also, Scott ordered Adjutant Gen. Michael Calhoun to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of the emergency.
Scott headed Friday morning to Miami for briefings about the storm and a news conference at the local emergency-operations center. He is expected to return to Tallahassee later in the day for a briefing at the state Emergency Operations Center, according to a schedule released by his office.
Pictured below: Gov. Rick Scott is briefed on Tropical Storm Erika on Friday.
Escambia Man Convicted Of Shooting Jogger In The Face
August 29, 2015
An Escambia County man has been convicted of shooting a jogger in the face last year.
Roosevelt Bonner, Jr., was convicted by an Escambia County Jury of attempted first degree premeditated murder and aggravated battery.
On August 22, 2014 the victim was jogging on Avery Street when he was approached by Bonner, who asked the victim a question. The victim did not understand what Bonner was asking so he kept jogging. The victim is Vietnamese and does not speak English. A few blocks down the road, Bonner approached the victim once again, pointing a gun to his face and firing one shot in the victim’s cheek. Bonner was located by law enforcement the next day at the Kangaroo Express on Mobile Highway. Located in the bathroom trash can was a .32 caliber handgun. DNA testing revealed Bonner’s DNA on the pistol. Ballistic testing matched that firearm to the casing recovered at the scene of the crime. Three days after the shooting, the victim identified Bonner in a photo lineup.
Circuit Judge Ross Goodman scheduled sentencing for October 1. Bonner has four prior felony convictions and was released from prison on April 1, 2012. The State will request that Bonner be sentenced as a prison releasee reoffender. Bonner faces up to life in state prison with a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years.