Posted on 09/20/2003 7:35:22 AM PDT by Rebelbase
As Hurricane Isabel tore through Eastern North Carolina, it picked on some of North Carolina's most vulnerable areas: the fragile Outer Banks and the largely poor, rural northeast corner. Now, the state and its residents are trying to figure out how to fix crumbled roads, broken power lines and waterlogged houses.
By Friday night, three people were known to have died in the storm. An estimated 283,000 were without power, down from a high of 700,000, and 70,000 had no phone service. In the northeast, the lights might not be back on for as long as two weeks, utility officials said. Forty shelters remained open.
A total of 42 counties have declared states of emergency, and President Bush's disaster declaration to 26 counties may extend to additional communities as the need arises, Gov. Mike Easley said.
"Our primary concern is public health, safety, shelter, food, water, power and medical care -- and opening roads for emergency vehicles so that we can do all of the above that I just mentioned," the governor said Friday, after surveying the damage in a helicopter.
Isabel didn't leave the kind of widespread destruction that the state saw after Hurricanes Fran and Floyd, but in the pockets where it did its worst, it left a changed landscape.
The surging ocean cut a new, deep inlet to the ocean on Hatteras Island, leaving Hatteras Village cut off from the mainland. Neighborhoods became lakes. Waves crashed through the front doors of beach houses and moved a few into the water. Wind, which was measured at speeds as high as 110 mph, toppled trees in more than two dozen counties.
The number of homes damaged was still uncounted, but county-by-county reports showed extensive damage in some places.
Beaufort County officials estimated that a third of the 1,000 homes in Belhaven were damaged, and in Carteret County, at least 40 homes were flooded. In Chowan County, an estimated 75 percent of all structures were damaged. In Kitty Hawk, several beachfront homes were pitched forward, their front walls torn off and contents spilling onto the beach.
"It's kind of devastating," said Terry Cargill, 49, a property manager who was inspecting her homes in Kitty Hawk, tissue box in hand. "Everything you worked for all your life, to see it come down in 12 hours."
The state has hardly begun its damage assessment, and won't be able to estimate the cost of cleanup until next week. Many of the hardest-hit areas lost phone service, and roads were blocked by felled trees, so damage reports were spotty.
But it appears that the Outer Banks from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras Village took a severe beating, as did the rural counties surrounding the Albemarle Sound in northeastern North Carolina.
High water lingers
On Hatteras Island, the sun rose Friday morning to reveal a house sitting in the Pamlico Sound. Many parts of the island's main road, N.C. 12, were either crumbled or buried by sand and debris. And the new 300- to 400-foot-wide inlet north of Hatteras Village was so deep that large boats were passing through it.
State officials couldn't reach Hatteras Village Friday, but from the air its houses appeared like toys scrambled on a board, with roofs blown off. The storm surge appeared to have reached several blocks back from oceanfront.
In several counties near the Albemarle Sound, high water lingered in neighborhoods.
Power company officials warned residents that because of the severe tree wreckage, electrical power may not return for two weeks. Phone service was out. Gasoline stations were not pumping. Clerks rang up purchases with hand-held calculators in darkened stores.
Residents of historic Edenton, at the sound's northwest edge, said Isabel did more damage than Hazel in 1954 or Floyd in 1999, the prior benchmarks. The storm surge pushed water above the first floors of many downtown historic homes that had never flooded before.
"I left the cats and went upstairs," said Isabelle Ann Bruce, who lives in a 110-year-old house on East King Street. "Floyd went up to my house, but Isabel came right in."
From the air, many of the signs of Hurricane Isabel were subtle: the occasional uprooted tree or peeled tin roof, and streaks of mud in the sounds. Just off the Neuse River in Craven County, a 30-foot sailboat sat placidly on a dock Friday afternoon, while nearby a speedboat was still hoisted high and dry at the end of another dock that was no longer connected to land.
Not good at all.
It's also pretty evident from the photos that the sea washed over the entire barrier island for miles. That's the combination of (a) the "normal" storm surge conbined with (b) the direction this storm arrived from, (c) the hours of time to "pile up" the tidal surge, and (d) the fact that high tide was co-incident with the worst of the storm. It's exactly what I was worried about -- and probably worse since I was afraid of a bigger storm.
And this was "only" a Category TWO hurricane. Mercifully.
The lighthouse:
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