for the area. Gloria also threatened the Bahamas, prompting that government to issue hurricane watches and warnings. While Gloria was off the east coast of Florida, the NHC issued a hurricane watch from Edisto Beach, South Carolina to Cape Henry, Virginia, which was upgraded to a hurricane warning at 1000 UTC on September 26, or 19.5 hours before landfall. By later that day, a hurricane watch was issued for the rest of the eastern United States to Eastport, Maine. By two hours before Gloria's landfall on Long Island, a hurricane warning was in effect for the same area, after warnings were gradually extended further north. Officials anticipated higher winds and storm surge than what occurred, due to the hurricane weakening as it approached landfall. Officials in Delaware and Maryland declared a state of emergency before the storm struck, and thousands of people from coastal communities evacuated to shelters. Schools closed in Delaware, and non-emergency workers were sent home. Along Long Island in New York, hundreds of thousands of people evacuated their homes, and a state of emergency was declared for several counties. In Connecticut, about 20,000 people evacuated along the coast, and 7,300 evacuated from neighboring Rhode Island. Residents also evacuated portions of Cape Cod. As Gloria approached the East Coast of the United States, National Hurricane Center director Neil Frank called it the "Storm of the Century", due to its intensity and potential track over the densely populated region of New England. Such a track gathered the attention of many people, and led to the evacuation of 380,000 people along the coast from North Carolina to Connecticut. In Maryland, officials implemented lane reversing to expedite the evacuation process, a policy many other coastal states now use. Officials advised 95,000 citizens along the New Jersey coastline, an area that rarely experiences hurricanes, to evacuate. Cape May County—the most vulnerable part of the state and among the most susceptible in the entire country—would require 36 hours in 2005 to evacuate the 100,000 citizens and 900,000 tourists that were commonly present during busy summer weekends. Offices and classes of Harvard University closed only for the third time in the 20th century, the previous cases being the New England Hurricane of 1938 and the Blizzard of '78. Although Gloria's winds downed numerous trees and caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage in the area, overall effects were much less than expected. At