Post-Earl, business as usual along NC shore
Print- •
-
Share
- Share this item
-
Grab the link
Copy and paste the link:
- Blog about it
- Close
- •
-
Post a Comment
- •
Favorite- •
-
Report error
-
Thank you for your submission.Error report or correction
- Close
-
- •
KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. (AP) - In the annals of North Carolina hurricanes, Earl will be lucky to merit so much as a footnote.
Hours after the storm made its way north, vacationers and residents along the North Carolina coast were preparing to celebrate the last long weekend of summer.
Plywood sheets were taken down from homes, restaurants and shops throughout the Outer Banks, streets that were deserted 24 hours earlier were jammed with cars bearing out-of-state plates and officials breathed a sigh of relief at having missed the worst of the hurricane.
"We dodged a bullet. Purely and simply, North Carolina dodged a bullet," Gov. Beverly Perdue said Friday.
For some residents in the Outer Banks, though, the storm kicked up enough water and sand to close off sections of Highway 12, the main artery through the area, effectively stranding people until Saturday, when state road crews were expected to have the thoroughfare open.
But for many, Earl was little more than a minor annoyance at the start of Labor Day weekend.
"We evacuated, we came back, everything's still here," said Jeannie Sudimak of Youngstown, Ohio. "Perfect."
Sudimak and her husband, Rod, spent Thursday night in Rocky Mount, about 140 miles inland from Nags Head, but were ready for the beach by Friday afternoon.
"I'm not going to do anything all weekend except lie in the sun," Rod Sudimak said.
Tens of thousands of residents and tourists were urged to leave the Outer Banks ahead of the storm, which hit North Carolina with sustained winds of up to 59 miles an hour, gusting in places up to 82 mph. Some minor damage and brief power outages were reported, but there were no reports of injuries or deaths related to the storm.
About 5,000 electric customers in Hyde County awakened without power, but most had been restored by the afternoon, said Kristie Aldridge, spokeswoman for North Carolina Electric Cooperatives. Service was also restored for Dare County customers who lost power during the storm.
A Progress Energy spokeswoman said work crews had restored power to 3,500 customers who had lost power in New Bern, Morehead City and Jacksonville.
Greg and Debbie Webster spent days anxiously watching weather reports from their Linkwood, Md., home, wondering if it would scratch their plans of meeting friends in Nags Head for the holiday weekend. On Friday morning, with television footage still showing heavy winds and pelting rain, they decided to take a gamble.
"We put the dog in the kennel, put the car on the road and said, 'Let's just chance it, man,'" Greg Webster said. "We got lucky."
By the time the Websters arrived on the Outer Banks, the rain had stopped and a line of blue sky was advancing from the west. The waves at high tide were practically lapping at the dunes along the shore. Still, as they stopped at an ABC store, the couple relished their plans for the weekend.
"It's kind of like the last hurrah before reality sets in that summer's over," Greg Webster said.
The prospect of a lost weekend was grim not just for tourists, but for the small communities along the coast that depend on the summer season to deliver a healthy shot to the local economy.
In Atlantic Beach, a town in Carteret County, officials were hoping an early announcement that the evacuation order had been lifted would bring people back in time for the three-day weekend.
"The relief that we didn't get hit by a Category 3 hurricane is obvious," Mayor Trace Cooper said. "But the relief of having it pass by early enough so we could open at 5 o'clock in the morning and get the word out so that when second-home owners and visitors are going to work in Raleigh or Wilson or wherever can hear we're open for business" is good too.
He said his impression was that reservations were way down at the beginning of the week. One hotel manager told him that he normally required a two-night minimum stay for the Labor Day weekend but ditched that, telling Cooper he would "do whatever we can to get people here."
For residents on Hatteras Island, though, the relief of Earl passing by quickly and with relatively little damage was tempered by the closure of Highway 12, which had sand piled as high as three feet in some places. Highway officials expected to have the road reopened to traffic by 7 a.m. Saturday, but some residents of stranded islands had other worries.
On Friday, Dave Hayden of Avon, a village on Hatteras Island, woke up to find a surge of water surrounding his house - the most flooding he's seen in a decade of living on the eastern barrier island.
"I was amazed, just startled," Hayden said.
Even as officials and forecasters declared Friday that the Outer Banks had dodged the worst of Earl, residents like Hayden were left to deal with flooding that stretched 40 miles from Rodanthe to Hatteras. In the middle was the old village of Avon.
"I'm not all that convinced that we missed the bullet," said Hayden as he waded through calf-deep water hours after the storm had passed. "Just look around."
There was little sign of flooding in the low-lying rural communities northeast of Beaufort along U.S. 70, the road that leads to the ferry that takes travelers to the Outer Banks.
"We're very fortunate," said Neill Ray, a dock master at the marina in downtown Beaufort who flew back on Thursday from Florida to help secure the area. He said neighbors helped to lower the storm shutters on his house about three blocks off the water.
"We're looking forward to a great weekend - the weather is going to be fantastic. We're glad the hurricane has passed and it really didn't do any damage. I feel bad for all the people who canceled all their plans and evacuated because there really wasn't much of anything last night," said Jeff Allenby, a graduate student in marine sciences at Duke University.
___
Associated Press writers Mike Baker in Avon, Bruce Smith in Beaufort, and Gary Robertson, Skip Foreman, Martha Waggoner and Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh contributed to this report.
-
Print
- •
-
Share
- Share this item
-
Grab the link
Copy and paste the link:
- Blog about it
- Close
- •
-
Post a Comment
- •
- Favorite
- •
-
Report error
-
Thank you for your submission.Error report or correction
- Close
-
- •
