The blow to the Outer Banks, a 120-mile strand of narrow barrier islands that is a veritable magnet for hurricanes, was a reminder of the menacing power the storm retained, even as it decreased in strength to a Category 1. Forecasters expect Dorian to move on Saturday over Nova Scotia, where the Canadian Hurricane Center has issued a hurricane warning for the eastern portion of the province.
The most frightening moments Friday morning occurred on Ocracoke Island, at the southern end of the Outer Banks. Donald Shumate, a spokesman for Hyde County, North Carolina, said the storm had brought a rapid rush of floodwater that had risen to 7 feet, sending residents scurrying to their second floors and attics.
Susie Fitch-Slater, 60, pastor of Ocracoke United Methodist Church, was shocked by its speed. One moment, she said, she was looking at small puddles in her backyard. A moment later, she said, the entire yard was flooded. “I am from the Outer Banks,” she said. “I was born here. And I have never seen anything like this before. I went into the attic, and I have never done that in my life. There was that moment when you wondered if it was ever going to stop. It’s the most frightened I’ve been, ever.”
Fitch-Slater said much of the water rushed out as quickly as it had rushed in, but it left plenty of devastation behind.
Shumate said that helicopters had been dispatched to bring in food and supplies and to evacuate the island’s most vulnerable residents. He said that about 800 people had remained, on an island whose permanent population hovers around 950.
Videos posted on social media Friday showed water rising up to the windows of cars and halfway up hotel room doors in Ocracoke. A boat made a wake along a road in front of a hotel called Blackbeard’s Lodge. Power lines sparked, and debris filled the flooded streets.
“I’ll just have to restart everything,” Eduardo Chavez, who runs a popular taco stand on the island, said in a brief phone interview. He hung up as he began to cry. He said later in a text message that his taco stand had not made it through the flooding. Chavez’s house, not far from the historic Ocracoke lighthouse, had also been flooded by 20 inches of rain.
The Ocracoke Harbor Inn said in a Facebook post that it had experienced “epic” flooding. “For now, we are all taking care of each other, as only Ocracoke can do,” the post read.
But as Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina pleaded with residents of the northeastern portion of his state to stay in their homes and stay off the roads, residents from the South Carolina coast down to Florida were busy removing boards from windows, reopening businesses and beginning to clean the gigantic mess that the storm’s western bands had left behind. In Charleston, South Carolina, more than 500 city employees participated in the cleanup effort. In the Bahamas, where at least 30 people were killed in the storm, the grimmer work of search and rescue continued.
Dorian came ashore in the United States around 8:30 a.m. Friday at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with wind gusts up to 120 mph. North Carolina officials reported 75 shelters open, 10 “primary routes” closed and blocked by water or trees, and more than 500 National Guard troops engaged in post-storm search and rescue.
The roads leading to the North Carolina coast were mostly empty of traffic but littered with branches, leaves and power lines. Some roads were blocked entirely by trees or water.
On the northern stretches of the Outer Banks, the damage appeared minimal. Pastel beach houses stood empty, seafood restaurants were boarded up, and sand littered the road. The rain continued to pour in the afternoon, and there were few people to be seen.
In Kitty Hawk, also part of the Outer Banks, the flooding was not severe, but wind and rain battered the area, ripping a large sign off a music venue called Paparazzi OBX. Across the street, bright lights were flashing from electrical wires near a post office.
Mike Beatty Jr., whose family owns the music venue, said that residents of the islands were responding to the storm with the compassion on which the island locals pride themselves.
“It’s scary, but we’re weathering the storm together — literally,” Beatty said.
More than a dozen people had responded to Jamie Anderson’s call for help moving books to higher shelves at her independent bookstore, Downtown Books, in Manteo on Roanoke Island. It was a good thing they did, too. On Friday, water lapped at the steps of the store.
Tropical Storm Michael had flooded the store in October 2018 and ruined $11,000 worth of merchandise, Anderson said. Over the seven years the store has been in business, she has gotten used to the drill.
The threat of storms is built into the rhythm of life on the Outer Banks, where an intimate connection to the forces of nature has always been a great draw — and a great challenge. In the early 1900s, the communities of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills attracted the Wright brothers, who were looking for empty spaces and strong winds to test their pioneering flying machines.
Decades later, the promise of good year-round surfing was a big draw for Matt Walker, 47, editor of the quarterly local magazine Outer Banks Milepost. But he and others live with an inextinguishable awareness of the threats to their homes, and to the islands themselves, from sea level rise or the next big storm.
“Just look at a map of the Outer Banks from space — it’s pretty clear it’s a fragile place,” Walker said Friday. “I can stand in my street and look east and see the dunes where you walk to the beach, and look west and see the sound. Your physical geography tells you you’re vulnerable.”
In Kill Devil Hills on Friday evening, no sooner had the rain let up and the curfew been lifted than the crowds began to gather at the Avalon Fishing Pier. There were families and couples, older adults and babies, walking barefoot and in boots up on the dunes to watch the enormous crashing waves of Dorian’s farewell.
“Most hurricanes we’ve had, they’ve come at night,” said Jaden Howard, 16. He had been here for all of the hurricanes, he said. Florence, Matthew, Joaquin, Irene, it was hard to keep track. He feels like it has gotten worse in recent years.
“Our island’s gotten a lot skinnier,” he said of the cumulative effect of all these storms. “If a Category 4 was to hit here just right, I think it would destroy the Outer Banks.”
This article originally appeared in
.