Fay chugs toward Gulf cities

APALACHICOLA, Fla. — Fay just won't quit.

The tropical depression that 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 storm can be as deadly and damaging as a hurricane, Fay killed at least 11 people in Florida and one in Georgia, emergency officials said.

Thousands of homes and businesses were inundated with flood waters this 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. EDT 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.

At 8 p.m. EDT, 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.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for the northeastern Gulf Coast from Suwanee River, Fla., west to the Alabama-Mississippi border, and storm surge flooding of two to four feet was possible. Late Saturday, the storm was downgraded to a tropical depression, although heavy rain was still expected along the Gulf Coast.

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

The U.S. Coast Guard in Mobile, Ala., closed numerous ports and waterways between Panama City in Florida and the Alabama coast to the east.

In southwest Georgia, officials said a boy drowned Saturday while playing in a drainage ditch swollen by 10 to 12 inches of rain.

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.

City officials in Slidell, La., where forecasters predicted 3 to 5 inches of rain could fall late today and through Monday, said emergency vehicles had been fueled and workers were on call.