MIAMI -- It wasn't much of a year for Atlantic hurricanes in 1994, but the
tropical storms were killers.

The first named storm of the year, Alberto, moved inland and then stalled over
Georgia in July, filling the rivers, especially the Flint, to overflowing in
the southern half of the state -- and killing 31.

The last storm of the season was Gordon, a desultory but deadly storm that
wreaked havoc on Haiti, killing at least 830 as heavy rains washed away flimsy
hillside structures. The November storm killed five people in the Dominican
Republic, two in Cuba, two in Jamaica and eight more as it crisscrossed
Florida.

"Whenever you have large loss of life, it's always water, it's not wind," said
Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane centre in Coral Gables.

"In the Caribbean and Central America, it's water due to heavy rains, flash
floods, and mudslides. In the U.S., it's storm surge, people dying in the surf
or inland flooding such as we had with Alberto."

That storm offered some important lessons about the need for better
communication when tropical weather carries torrential rains inland to river
valleys and mountainsides.

"Why did we have more than 30 lives lost in Tropical Storm Alberto?" Sheets
asked. "There is really no excuse for that. The warnings were put out by the
National Weather Service. But there was a lack of perception within the public
about the danger."

Sheets suggested all local weather service operations should be
"user-friendly" and local media need to work more closely covering a storm's
aftermath. The hurricane centre runs an extensive public education program and
works closely with the media.

"Whose fault was it? Maybe it was the lack of focus by the media," Sheets
said. "The warnings were up. But nobody anticipated the degree of flooding."

In between Alberto in July and Gordon in mid-November came Debby, a tropical
storm that formed east of the Lesser Antilles in mid-September and caused nine
deaths, mostly in the neighboring islands of Martinique and St. Lucia.

There were seven named storms in 1994, fewer than the average of ten in the
Atlantic in a given year. There are six hurricanes in a typical year.

The only hurricanes were: Chris, which formed in the deep tropics in August
and died over open water; Florence, another that formed in the deep tropics
and spun harmlessly to the north; and Gordon, which turned into a hurricane
briefly off North Carolina's Outer Banks before doubling back and fizzling.
The season starts June 1 and ends November 30.

Chris and Gordon were minimal hurricanes, while the winds of Florence reached
100 mph. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its sustained winds reach
74 mph.

Gordon knocked down several houses along the North Carolina coast and narrow
shots of the damage made great television footage, but most of the houses had
been undermined in previous storms.

"We kind of dodged a bullet on this one," said Burt Prevo, emergency

operations office for the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management. "It
was very minimal. We were very fortunate in that it actually turned south and
moved away from us."

Tracking indecisive Gordon was the biggest challenge for the National
Hurricane centre, which took advantage of new sophisticated computer models
that provided the best tracking system yet for forecasters.

Hurricane tracking should be even more accurate when the hurricane centre's
new jet goes into use for the first time in 1996. The mid-size jet will allow
collection of more sophisticated data from the atmosphere miles from the storm
than that collected by turboprops that are best-suited for flying into the eye
of the storm.

"To get to the vast areas around the hurricane, we have to move fast and get
high enough to measure pressure and winds," Sheets said.

The cleanup from this year's tropical storms is far from over.

Alberto delivered a $1 billion blow to Georgia's economy, led by $500 000 in
damages to uninsured property and $200 000 in agricultural losses. In
southwest Georgia, 1 700 families are still living in mobile homes and
trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Albany Mayor Paul Keenan says it may take three years for the city to recover.
The theme of this year's Christmas parade on December 6 will be thanksgiving.

"We're going to give thanks for Albany's survival," Keenan says. "We're going
to give thanks for the blessings we've received as we've come through this
natural disaster."

There was less reason for gratitude in Haiti, where the death toll from Gordon
was still growing when Haitians were only starting to savor their latest bid
for democracy.

The severity of the destruction was blamed on heavy erosion along Haiti's
hillsides, many of them crammed with tin shacks built on weak foundations,
said Haiti's Agriculture Minister Francois Severin, who added:

"In some regions the dead have not yet been counted."(AP)