Outer Banks Sentinel

Days before Hurricane Irene’s arrival on the Outer Banks, with changing projections of the storm’s intensity and path, Hatteras islanders weighed the pros and cons of leaving.

Dare County ordered a mandatory evacuation, issuing a release that stated, “Those who do not evacuate should expect consequences.”

With the storm downgraded from a Category 3 to a Category 1 hurricane, approaching the island with 90 mph winds and heavy rain, many residents elected to stay, boarding up their homes and businesses and parking their vehicles in nearby areas with higher elevations.

Arriving on Saturday, Aug. 27, Irene battered Hatteras for nearly 24 hours before moving on to Virginia. The storm also left behind soundside flooding that was the worst in recent memory. The island was cut off from the rest of Dare County by two major breaches, a 900-foot section of N.C. 12 five miles north of Rodanthe and a large breach at the S-curves at Mirlo Beach.

By the very next day, “partial re-entry” for portions of Dare County – excluding Hatteras Island and Duck – signaled a return to “normalcy” for much of Dare County. But on Hatteras Island, the problems had just begun.

With the road impassable, many cars out of commission due to flooding, no electrical power, no refigeration and no telephone, internet or cell phone service, island residents were literally “in the dark” and in a precarious position.

Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mike Daugherty, Salvo Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jimmie Hooper and Avon Volunteer Fire Department Chief Shawn Gray confirmed that the fire stations became the “eyes and ears” of the island and its only link to the outside world.

“The conditions were just right for the worst flooding most of us remember seeing in our lifetimes,” said Hooper, Salvo fire chief. “The storm went up the sound, and that’s the worst possible place a hurricane can go for us. It was a huge storm, and it was also the slowest moving storm I’ve ever seen. It had died down from a Cat three to a Cat one, but it still carried the tide of a three. Once it gets that high, it’s already pushing the water ahead of it. And when the water came back, it came. You could see it rolling in late Saturday afternoon.

“Everybody I talked to said they’d never seen the tide that high before. The water went into places it’s never been, and a lot of people were flooded. When that happens, it shocks people. They don’t know what to do. So they started showing up here. The word got around that there was help available at the fire station. You can get some food and some help getting your thoughts together.”

In Avon, conditions were the same.

“We were able to become a communications center,” said Gray, Avon’s fire chief. “Just a few months ago, the county established a new eight-hundred megahertz radio system, which enables us to talk county-wide. The Emergency Operations Center set up daily ‘all-calls’ at various times, giving us a rundown of conditions around the county. All the fire chiefs switched over to Fire Tac 42. They would have a roll-call starting with Hatteras Station 40. We would all check in and discuss conditions and needs at each individual department. Emergency Management relayed all the current information and expectations of what the storm was going to do, where it was located, what the expected flood surge was. This was the first full-bore operational test for the system and overall it worked really well.

“The fire department really became a hub for the community – a place for people to find out what was going on, what help was available, socialize, talk about what happened to them in the storm, get moral support. We’re very fortunate to have a facility like this.”

The fire departments became the life-line to the outside world.

“We were all available via radio the whole time,” said Daugherty, Chicamacomico Banks fire chief. “Particularly for the first five or six days, here in the villages that was pretty much our only link to the outside world and one another.

“This really wasn’t a wind event, and if we had had much stronger winds, it might have changed things. We also had a VHF system in place as a backup in case the eight-hundred system went down, but you can see the size of the microwave dishes for the system on the tower behind us. They’re huge and there’s a lot of wind resistance there. They only had to blow out of whack a little bit to lose their signal. That would’ve shut down the eight-hundred system for Hatteras Island. But it didn’t and the eight-hundred system stayed up.”

Reporting varying degrees of flood damage to their own facilities, the chiefs said their volunteers were also dealing with damage to their homes. “We have one firefighter whose mobile home was flooded so bad it will have to be demolished,” said Hooper. “Another one lost his trailer and everything he had but himself and his dog.”

Daugherty and his wife had to move out of their home until it is rebuilt.

In spite of their losses, the firefighters went about doing what they have been trained to do. “At sunrise that Sunday morning, Jimmie and I did a survey of the three villages in our ‘deuce and a half,’” said Daugherty. “By then the water had gone down quite a bit, and we had no problem driving as far north as Mirlo Beach – but that was as far as we could go.”

Priorities included checking on elderly and disabled people, looking for downed power lines and making sure all propane tanks were turned off. Many were not fastened down and were floating “hither and yon” with the flood waters. As supplies started coming in, the fire stations were turned into “warehouses” filled with necessities.

“People started showing up, saying, ‘I need help,’” recalled Hooper. “We had stoves, grills and freezers full of food, and some stores also donated food items. When the power went out the evening of the storm, we started our propane-powered generator. In the middle of the night, the propane tank floated and snapped the line. We had to commandeer another propane tank that came floating by.”

Volunteers also soon started arriving, asking, “What can I do to help?” As firefighters and community volunteers set to work cleaning out flooded homes – pulling out furniture, belongings, carpets, insulation and sheetrock – it soon became obvious that some coordination was needed.

“I have to brag on my wife Jenny,” said Hooper. “She used a chalk board at the fire station and did a great job of delegating and coordinating.” National Guard and Coast Guard teams were dispatched to worksites, along with volunteers from the N.C. Baptist Men, Operation Blessing, island churches and a host of volunteers from the southern villages.

Setting up the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Community Center as a feeding station and shelter, the firefighters welcomed the Salvation Army, which took over cooking and serving meals. The Baptist Men provided trailers equipped with showers and laundry facilities. Many of the volunteers slept on donated army cots in the fire stations.

“After three weeks, those cots were not comfortable,” said Daugherty. “But we started every day at 6 a.m. and there wasn’t one of us that wasn’t exhausted at the end of the day. One man had hundreds of movies on his hard drive for us to watch, but I don’t think we ever saw a whole movie at the end of the day. I remember thinking what a relief it was to finally lay down on my army cot for the night.”

When the chiefs were commended for their efforts, they were quick to direct the praise elsewhere. “The Baptist Men also had women with them,” said Daugherty. “And none of them were too ‘dainty’ to get into the muck like everyone else. They worked just as hard – got just as dirty – as any of the guys. And it was dirty work.”

Local Food Lion stores were thanked for donating two refrigeration trucks, while Mojo’s and the Top Dog Restaurant were appreciated for cooking and serving meals for several nights to give the Salvation Army workers a break.

“I am very proud of our department and the job they did,” said Gray.

“I have to give Mike Daugherty a lot of credit,” said Hooper. “He really busted butt.”

“We all did,” said Daugherty. “But I have to recognize Jenny Hooper. We started to get a lot of duplication of effort, but she took over keeping a list of people who needed help and who was available, and she did a heck of a job. Her daughter Elaine also really jumped in and helped quite a bit with that, too.”

Daugherty said one junior firefighter who lives in Buxton hitched a ride with the National Guard when there was no other way to reach the northern villages. “He’s a prime example of what we saw a lot,” Daugherty noted. “He lived the next three weeks up here at the station until he had to go back to school.”

Applauding Dare County Social Services and Janet Bigney and the Really, Really Free Market for all their work, Daugherty also singled out Irvin Midgett, owner of St. Clair Landing Family Campground in Rodanthe. “Irvin is one of our local folks who really stepped up to the plate. Even though his own place was torn up really bad, he hauled campers that were on the side of the highway down to the Salvo Day Use Area. He stepped up to the plate a lot during the storm.”

Daugherty cited other occasions when Midgett “saw a need and met it” – repairing a generator at the Community Center, taking volunteers with him to stand up tombstones that had been knocked over during the storm. “That wasn’t what you would call a top priority, but to the older people in our community those tombstones needed to be stood,” Daugherty said.

Fire chiefs Bryan Perry in Buxton, Richard Marlin in Frisco and Jack Scarborough in Hatteras also stepped up to help.

“A big, warm thank you needs to go to Richard Marlin,” said Daugherty. “He’s a logistics genius and he made things happen. If we needed fuel, he got us fuel – the Frisco Fire Department delivered fuel sometimes twice a day. When we needed food, Richard got us food. You name it. Whatever we couldn’t get – or if we were going to have to wait for it to come from off the island – he got it from the south of the island and got it up here. I don’t know how he did it.”

Noting that it will be a long time before Hatteras Island gets “back to normal,” Daugherty added that he had already observed one significant benefit from the storm: “For the guys who do construction work, there’s plenty of work again.”

“In a situation like this,” said Hooper, “you really find out what people are made of. Starting the day after the storm, people were out, seeing who needed a hand. It was the community helping the community – and it was a great thing to see.”

Daugherty added, “While Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo are individual villages, we were reminded that we are really one community. And seeing lots and lots of volunteers come up from the south end of the island to help really made you feel once again like the whole island is one community.”

And the extraordinary efforts of those on the island has not gone unnoticed by the rest of Dare County.

On Sunday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m., the Hatteras Island firemen and chiefs will be the special guests at the performance of Alway…Patsy Cline at Cape Hatteras Secondary School. The performance, sponsored by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau and Elizabeth R & Company will be free and open to the public.