From the air, it's easy to see how Hurricane
Isabel ripped a new inlet between the
village of Hatteras and the rest of the
island, severing North Carolina Route 12.
DON LONG/TIMES-DISPATCH
Posted on 09/29/2003 4:19:20 AM PDT by putupon
Written in sand
Storms repeatedly open and close inlets on Hatteras
BY BILL GEROUX
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Sep 29, 2003
From the air, it's easy to see how Hurricane
Isabel ripped a new inlet between the
village of Hatteras and the rest of the
island, severing North Carolina Route 12.
DON LONG/TIMES-DISPATCH
From the air, it's easy to see how Hurricane Isabel ripped a new inlet between the village of Hatteras and the rest of the island, severing North Carolina Route 12. DON LONG/TIMES-DISPATCH HATTERAS, N.C. - The new inlet is a nasty piece of work.
It is a gash one-third of a mile long isolating the main part of Hatteras Island from this storm-battered village at the island's southern tip.
It ranges in depth from 2 feet to 30, and it changes constantly. It contains two ragged islands topped with crumpled asphalt from North Carolina Route 12, the only road that led to the village.
At high tide, the ocean roars through the inlet into Pamlico Sound in a confusion of whitecaps and breaking surf.
A half-submerged house far out in the sound only adds to the rawness of the scene.
The inlet was created on Sept. 18, most likely during the early afternoon hours, when Hurricane Isabel was at its worst.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has predicted it will get the inlet plugged within 3? weeks, by Oct. 24. The Corps has summoned a huge dredge it says can fill the inlet with sand faster than the ocean can steal it.
The senior Corps commander, Col. Ray Al- exander, says the gap in the island is a "breach" rather than a natural process at work. At a meeting in Hatteras on Saturday, he dismissed critics of the project as "nay-sayers."
But Alexander acknowledged that the Corps already has changed its project on the fly, and that subsequent storms or equipment problems could complicate things.
"Engineering is a science," he said. "But there are a lot of variables and a lot of unknowns to what we're working with."
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Oregon and Hatteras inlets, which many people today consider permanent parts of the landscape, were opened by the same huge hurricane in 1846.
Another monster hurricane in 1933 tore open an inlet in the same spot as Hurricane Isabel did, said former Dare County Sheriff Bert Austin, who was 2 at the time. Austin said a wooden bridge was built across that inlet to carry what few vehicles made the trip in those days.
"But after a number of years, the inlet filled in by itself, and people stopped using the bridge and went back to just driving along the sand," Austin said. The government finally burned the useless bridge in 1941 to harvest the metal in it for the war effort, he said.
As if to honor its predecessor, the new inlet opened by Hurricane Isabel exposed pilings from the old inlet bridge that had been hidden beneath the sand for a half-century. "Some of us knew they were down there somewhere," Austin said.
The most recent inlet on Hatteras Island before Isabel was cut in 1962 between Buxton and Avon by a fierce nor'easter popularly known as the Ash Wednesday Storm. The Corps struggled for nearly a year before it successfully closed that inlet with two small dredges.
Hurricane Dennis in 1999 opened a narrow breach in the island in roughly the same place as the Ash Wednesday Storm. That opening closed itself, and the state highway department quickly repaired Route 12 and reunited the island.
As one 50-something Hatteras native put it last week, "This isn't our first inlet."
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Dr. Orrin Pilkey, a retired Duke University geologist and a frequent critic of engineering projects to protect beachfront development, said the new inlet might not stay closed.
Filling the gap should require somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million cubic yards of sand, Alexander said, depending on how fast the ocean steals what the dredge deposits.
Corps officials said the cost surely will exceed $3 million, most of it borne by FEMA.
Alexander said the Corps could reunite the island by Oct. 24 if all goes well. But, he said, any number of factors could affect the timetable, including the weather.
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(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
Six hundred people live there at their own choice in a place that is known to wash out with hurricane after hurricane. The tax dollars that are taking care of them are not removed from others who live and work in a more stable environment at their own choice voluntarily.
True. One solution is to do away with taxpayer-subsidized, relatively cheap National Flood Insurance. If a homeowner had to pay the cost of "real" insurance, most could not afford it and most would not build an uninsured home at a place where it is likely to be destroyed.
How about people who live by their own choice near a river? Or in tornado alley? Or in an area that consistenly gets FEET of lake effect snow (helloooooo Buffalo). Or in an earrhquake zone?
Are you making yourself the arbiter where we can and can't live? If there is a STATE ROAD that is washed out, the people who pay taxes can expect that road to be fixed.
And NOTHING of what you said makes your misleading title any more truthful.
Geez, take a valium.
Boats work there, don't they?
Don't need to. I'm moving to the beach and relax, knowing you're going pick others pockets to pay for it.
I'm with you on that.
There was little construction of any sort on South Padre Island here in Texas, no hotels, no "permanent" dwellings until the early '80's (I think it was) when they extended federal insurance to that barrier island.
Now it looks like Panama City, and all Americans will foot the bill when the next hurricane comes through there.
Actually, when you look at the immense amount of money the Outer Banks pumps into the coffers of the state of North Carolina and the Counties of Dare and Currituck, the government is coming out ahead.
They buy insurance if they have any sense, and the roads are still there because there is still there after the flood recedes. Tornado people with any sense have storm cellars, and again, there is still there after the tornado goes away.
You make the choice of where you live. No one in the United States outside of the prison system is forced to live at a given location at gunpoint.
Comparisons between inland floodplains and tornado regions to a pile of sand in the ocean is apples and oranges.
My brother-in-law's place in Kitty Hawk is still there, Nags Head is still there, Ocracoke is still there. Corolla is still there, Kill Devil Hills are still there, as are the huge National Park, Rodanthe, etc.. The Ferrys haven't sunk.
Fighting a battle w/ nature that you know you can't win to try and save one dinky sandbar doesn't make alot of sense to me.
Yes, all pumping MILLIONS of dollars into the economy and government coffers. Thank you for making my point.
Fighting a battle w/ nature that you know you can't win to try and save one dinky sandbar doesn't make alot of sense to me.
Considering the area has been inhabited for over 150 years, with very little inconvenience, I'd say your assertion that they are "Fighting a battle w/ nature that you know you can't win" is erroneous.
Uh, flood insurance is subsidized by the Federal Government.
and the roads are still there because there is still there after the flood recedes.
Oh really? Not in my experience. Raging flood waters easily undermine roads. Not to mention all the other damamge to infrastructure floods cause. How about bridges?
Tornado people with any sense have storm cellars, and again, there is still there after the tornado goes away.
What does "there is still there" mean? If you mean the people are still there, yes, but the house is gone, along with powerlines, telephone service, etc. All to be rebuilt with the help of the government dime.
You make the choice of where you live. No one in the United States outside of the prison system is forced to live at a given location at gunpoint.
Yep. And as long as people choose to live in flood plains, tornado-prone areas, heavy snow belts, fault zones, etc, your complaint that a STATE road is being rebuilt is specious.
Comparisons between inland floodplains and tornado regions to a pile of sand in the ocean is apples and oranges.
Why?
I've had the pleasure of meeting many of the permanant residents of the Hatteras area in the past, and I wouldn't classify many of them as "rich". That is why the additional title is so misleading. This isn't just a private road to beachfront villas, it is a state road to a hard working village that is 150 years old.
Exactly. The majority of the high dollar homes are up north in Corolla.
There's a lot of history on the OBX. And there's a lot of value (tourist dollar and otherwise) to people being able to drive to Hatteras.
Ocracoke is an island already. Access hasn't been cut off completely. If they didn't rebuild the road (at taxpayer's expense) they would add another ferry route (and the days of free ferry rides are numbered).
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