OPAL FORCES JACKSON COUPLE OUT OF FLORIDA

A Jackson couple arrived home safely and dry after Hurricane Opal forced an early end to their Florida vacation.

Dawn and Ken Detring made it home Thursday night after fleeing a vacation condo on the sugar-white beaches of Destin. The Detrings were staying there with some cousins from St. Louis, Dawn Detring said.

"We only had to leave one day earlier than we planned," she said.

The approaching hurricane wasn't the only storm brewing, Detring said. "Everything was the Big O: It was either O.J. or Opal," she joked.

The group decided to ask local residents -- veterans of previous hurricanes, including Hurricane Erin earlier this year -- whether they should just pack up and head home.

"Monday when we were out shopping all the locals said, 'Don't worry, you don't know where it's going to hit yet.' Tuesday when we were out shopping everybody said, 'When we get home we're packing up and leaving,'" she said.

Tuesday night they gassed up the car, planning to leave Wednesday. "We figured there'd be long lines at the gas stations if we waited until Wednesday," she said.

"At 10 o'clock (Tuesday night) we got a call that we had to be out, evacuated by 9 o'clock Wednesday morning. We left at midnight (Wednesday) and drove to Hattiesburg, Miss. We got there about 4:30, and we learned at 6 o'clock that they had closed the interstate we'd been traveling on. We would have had to travel those little county roads all the way out."

Conditions weren't "too terribly bad" when they left, Detring said. "There was lots of rain and gusts of wind," she said.

Detring said they made it to Hattiesburg "about four or five hours ahead of the crowd" of evacuees.

"There was a steady stream of people coming in to the hotel and asking for rooms, and they were telling them everything was booked up through Jackson, Miss., and they'd have to keep heading north," she said.

By Wednesday evening, they had made it to Memphis. "It was kind of exciting, but we were glad we made the decision to leave instead of waiting until Wednesday morning," Detring said.

While they were heading for Mississippi and points north, she said, Opal wasn't their only concern. "I was really more concerned as we were leaving with the tornadoes that would be spinning off (from Opal) in Alabama and Mississippi," she said.

Detring can't help but wonder how badly Destin fared in the storm.

"That Gulf Storm Drive that all the condos are on, we heard it was under a foot and a half of sand," she said.

Detring said she and her husband go to Florida "every couple of years. This was our first trip to Destin."

The Detrings' three daughters, ages 15, 10 and 6, stayed home with grandma, she said.