Mitigation In Action - Historic Island Communities Find Up Is the Best Way Out
Release Date: November 20, 2003
Release Number: FNF-03-18
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Jenny Jones, in charge of mitigation projects for Dare County, walks by one of 10 homes which received a FEMA and state elevation grants and had no damage from Hurricane Isabel. Photo: Cynthia Hunter/ FEMA News Photo
Bob Parker received a FEMA and state grant which elevated his home after repeated flooding. His home suffered no damage during Hurricane Isabel. Photo: Cynthia Hunter/ FEMA News Photo |
Background
As the automobile and highways began to reach out across America, once-remote areas became highly desirable places to live. North Carolina's Outer Banks, a thin line of barrier islands 25 miles or more from the mainland in places, began to be built up as never before. Historic Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers achieved the first powered flight, and Roanoke Island, where Sir Walter Raleigh once planted the first English colony in the New World, saw populations boom. Many structures were built before flood maps had been defined, or even thought of.
Then as major storms began to roll in, especially in the last decade, the growing population saw how vulnerable they were to the forces of both the ocean on one side and Pamlico and Albemarle sounds on the other.
People who lived in houses that flooded with every major storm began to live with dresser drawers piled on top of the dressers.
Mickey and Linda Daniels' home in Wanchese, on Roanoke Island, was flooded in the "Storm of the Century" in March 1993. Every year after that, the arrival of hurricane season would make Mickey acutely aware of the weather reports, especially when tropical storms began brewing far out in the Atlantic. "Every time I looked off that African coast, I started getting nervous," he recalls.
Not far away, Boyd and June Basnight discovered that the half mile between their Wanchese home and the harbor meant nothing to an ill wind and a storm-driven sea. Thirteen inches of floodwater surged through the house in 1993, damaging or destroying all in its path and leaving behind a lingering uncertainty. In the following years, an approaching storm would send the couple into a frantic scramble to raise furniture onto blocks and boxes.
Some 15 miles north, in Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks, Lou and Helen Hoppe lived in a large and stately historic home built in the 1890s. But after the "Storm of the Century," and then Hurricane Fran in 1996, they were ready to move.
"I don't care if you get two inches or three feet, it's a mess," Lou says. "If you've ever been flooded once, it's something you never want to go through again."
Taking Action
Roanoke Island and much of the Outer Banks are part of Dare County-named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, on Sir Raleigh's ill-fated colony.
After Hurricane Bonnie hit in 1998, Dare County was ready to participate in a mitigation project for the first time. Jenny Gray Jones, a seventh-generation resident of the Outer Banks and project manager for the county's hurricane recovery mitigation projects, recalls that 400 families showed up for a town meeting on an elevation project. Three hundred applied for the project. The process eventually winnowed the ten that would get the $719,000 in funding, which was split between FEMA (75 percent) and the state of North Carolina (25 percent).
The project took time. Engineering drawings were required, then contractors hired-and the contractors capable of such projects were booked up to two years in advance.
But the homes were elevated before Isabel struck this year on September 18.
The Result
The test was not long in coming.
The whole Outer Banks were under evacuation orders when Isabel came ashore.
Mickey and Linda Daniels have lived in their home for 32 years. During the elevation of their home, the couple lived in a church trailer for more than three months. The temporary inconvenience proved worthwhile. When Isabel roared through the town, the storm surge covered their yard, and the garage took five inches of floodwater. But the house stayed high and dry. "I'm not under pressure as I was before," Mickey says. "I don't have that sense of dread that the water will come in."
The Basnights also found Hurricane Isabel less threatening to their property. Floodwaters entered their yard-but not their home. "I didn't have to find someone to move my furniture up in the air," recalls Boyd Basnight.
The Hoppes, too, found their home was indeed above the reach of Isabel's floodwaters. "We don't have to worry any more about being flooded," Lou Hoppes says.
They saved tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from this storm alone.
They saved untold grief and labor and heartache.
They showed that up is the way to go.
Last Modified: Tuesday, 20-Jan-2004 13:56:08