Hours after Hurricane Sally cleared the Alabama coast, the causeway to Dauphin Island was back open — an unusually quick reopening for a barrier island after a major tropical event — and officials turned to the work of assessing damage.
The first look at the island showed Bienville Boulevard transformed into what one reporter described as a virtual river. Mayor Jeff Collier provided updates through the morning, reporting that numerous west-end homes sustained varying degrees of structural damage.
Some stretches of the west end were impassable without a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and the island reopened Wednesday morning to people holding reentry passes. Collier’s assessment set the stage for what would become a long, island-wide recovery from the storm.