It now looks like Tropical Storm Hanna will mostly miss Moore County.

Emergency management officials are already focusing on the next storm.

"Most everything is supposed to stay east of (Interstate 95)," said Emergency Manager Scot Brooks. "We're not planning on opening any shelters and we're not activating the EOC (Emergency Operations Center)."

Public Safety will continue to keep an eye on Hanna, Brooks said, but it's turned the other eye toward Hurricane Ike, which is in the central Atlantic and is already a category four storm.

"We're going to start looking toward Ike possibly being an end-of-next-week event for us," Brooks said.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna churns toward landfall. Meteorologists believe it may become a minimal hurricane by the time it makes U.S. landfall sometime late Friday.

Gail Hartfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Raleigh, said that Moore County can expect some blustery winds and rain even though the eye will be well east.

"It's a pretty large system," she said. "You're not out of the woods, even though the center is east."

Rainfall should probably be in the neighborhood of an inch to an inch and a half, she said.

"There could easily be some heavier bands," she said. "It should start to dry out during the morning Saturday."

Moore County Public Safety has been receiving updates from the National Weather Service and meeting with partner agencies twice a day.

"We're prepared as well as we can be," County Manager Cary McSwain said during a news conference Wednesday. "We've got a very thorough plan for what this community will need if we are in harm's way."

Concerns include trees falling on power lines, high winds and flooding.

Public Safety has set up several shelters in conjunction with the school system that can be opened if needed. The county is also working with FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital and the area nursing homes on an evacuation plan.

"They're ready," he said, "but at this point I don't feel like we'll need to."

Contact Matthew Moriarty at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com.