Fay blamed in boy’s death

Apalachicola, Fla. —- Tropical Storm Fay, which set a record with four landfalls in Florida, chugged west across the Gulf Coast on Saturday and cities from Pensacola to New Orleans prepared for several inches of rain.

Proving that a slow-moving tropical storm can be as deadly and damaging as a hurricane, Fay killed at least one person in Georgia in addition to 11 people in Florida, emergency officials said.

In southwest Georgia’s Grady County, officials said a boy drowned Saturday while playing in a drainage ditch swollen by 10 to 12 inches of rain. Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ken Davis said a man was hospitalized after trying to save the boy trapped in the ditch.

The boy’s name was not immediately released and officials could not confirm his age.

Fay was blamed for widespread power outages across southern Georgia. A Georgia Power spokeswoman said about 4,700 customers were without electricity Saturday.

Thousands of homes and businesses have been inundated with flood waters during the past week as the storm worked its way north from its first landfall in the Florida Keys and zigzagged across the peninsula.

Fay’s center made its fourth landfall around 1 a.m. Saturday about 15 miles north-northeast of Apalachicola, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Rains and strong wind gusts blitzed Tallahassee, the state capital, for more than 24 hours, knocking down trees and power lines and cutting electricity to more than 12,000 customers, city officials said.

By Saturday evening, the storm’s center was about 35 miles northeast of Pensacola and moving west-northwest about 7 mph. Forecasters said Fay was weakening over land with maximum sustained winds near 40 mph but was still dumping heavy rain.

The storm was expected to move over southern Alabama and Mississippi today.

Fay was expected to produce total rainfall of 6 to 12 inches through today from western Florida all the way to eastern Louisiana.

In metro Atlanta, the National Weather Service forecast calls for showers and thunderstorms, some producing heavy rainfall, continuing through today and into the start of the week. The chance of rain ranges from 50 to 60 percent through Tuesday.

In the New Orleans area, which is approaching the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, forecasts called for 1 to 3 inches of rain on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

In St. Bernard Parish, site of some of the worst post-Katrina flooding, emergency officials were handing out sandbags Saturday.