My thought as well.
Maybe the gov is unable to monitor their activity, so they don’t want anyone doing anything they don’t know about.
Even if everybody works off a well w/an electric pump, there is such a thing as bottled water.
The state is getting much more tyrannical in dealing w/”emergencies”.
I’m sure the vacation rental owners pushed for this so that travelers could get reimbursed via travel insurance for having their vacations cut short. The weather has been unusually hot here in NC, even for July. The groundwater is in many instances not potable, only used to flush toilets and such. If there’s no power to the rental, there’s no power to cook, no refrigeration, same goes for restaurants and stores. This isn’t the same as if those two islands were strictly populated by locals who live there, they’re allowed to stay in case you didn’t notice the wording of the evacuation order. I don’t like Roy Cooper myself, think McCrory got frauded out of the governor’s mansion by Durham County, but McCrory would have done the same thing. A bunch of tourists aren’t going to be able to fend well for themselves with no electricity and therefore not much of anything else out there. It was the right thing to do.