Although I live in mtns now, I still have friends in Wake County, and they told me that Fran was a real mess in Raleigh: had to open a dump site just for all debris.
Fran was the worst I have lived through. It looked like we had been hit by some kind of WMD. Yes, we had a landfill opened that trucks filled with debris continued to dump into for over a year after Fran. I will never forget those winds! I vowed never again to sit home when a hurricane was coming through. Fran hit Raleigh after we thought it was going to miss to the East. The only radio station we could get was an FM rock station and the DJ was totally caught off guard as he became the central location for all the reports that started to flood in regarding damage and dangers. He did a great job. The usually on-top-of-things WPTF radio station had a guy on there who was dull as a dustmop and who never understood that a major crisis had hit. Let me just say, Fran was an "adventure" that devastated our area for months and one that I do not ever want to repeat.