Heading for higher ground

A September hurricane was bearing down coastal North Carolina in 1998, but Hazel Alcock had other things on her mind — finishing her granddaughter’s birthday cake.

As the winds howled and the rain got harder, she was finally persuaded by her husband, Frank, to gather up her cake, get in the car and leave lowlying Goose Creek Island in Pamlico County.

They did so just in time, as Hurricane Bonnie began sending water over the roadway.

That was an isolated incident, since the Alcocks historically have left the island during hurricanes. But, the delay could have had disastrous results.

The decision of when to leave and seek higher ground is a common issue in coastal North Carolina during hurricane season. Emergency management officials say they can only hope that people use common sense.

Last year was mild by hurricane standards, and that gives Stanley Kite, Craven County emergency management director, reason for concern.

“It varies from year to year. Our experience has been that when we have frequent events, we have a better response,” Kite said of evacuations. “When we have significant damages or flooding, then the next couple of events following that we will get a good response as far as people taking protective action, and those who need to evacuate, do evacuate.”

However, with a lull between storms, two things happen, he said.

People tend to forget or downsize the threat in their own minds, and over time there is an influx of new people. With the coastal building boom, they often occupy areas that were previously uninhabited.

In those places, effects of storm surge and tidal flooding is often unknown, he said.. While there are models and computer programs to forecast storm damage, hurricanes such as Floyd in 1999 can toss away a 500-year flood prediction.

Oceanfront is not the only target in a storm. That year, the devastating flooding reached inland as far as Lenoir, Craven, Duplin, Edgecombe and Nash counties.

“I am really, really concerned about some of our newer developments,” Kite said. “Most hurricane-related deaths are due to flooding, including storm surge. Floyd was an example.”

Two Craven County deaths were after-the-fact flooding fatalities.

“I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘I don’t need to evacuate for a Category 1 or a Category 2,” he said. “Well, that’s fine, if you are prepared for it.”

By prepared, he means being able to stay in place and maintain without assistance after the storm passes.

A common post-storm scenario: The toilet doesn’t flush, there is no electricity and no food or water, and infrastructure repairs are still days, sometimes weeks away.

Mark Goodman, Onslow County director of emergency services and homeland security, said computer programs such as Huzus-MH give a 90 percent-plus accuracy on projected damage and destruction.

“We make our decisions on evacuations based on the best information that we can formulate,” he said.

Enter the human factor.

“Will they listen? Will they leave?” he said of residents in harm’s way. “We don’t make these recommendations (evacuation) lightly to our elected officials.”

Among the tips given in preparation for hurricane season, Goodman suggests planning for a storm to be one category higher than it is at the time.

Goodman often hears stories from residents who brag of riding out and surviving past monster storms, as far back as Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s.

He offers a sobering story.

“There are worse things than Hazel out there that you haven’t even seen yet,” he said. “Down on the Gulf Coast, the mayor of Long Beach, Miss., said he went around trying to get folks to evacuate in the face of Katrina, which actually impacted the Mississippi coast worse than New Orleans.”

Residents waved the mayor off, boasting they had survived Camille, a savage 1969 storm that hit Mississippi with a 25-foot storm surge.

“The mayor said, ‘This is no Camille,’” Goodman recalled. “And they all died.”

Two miles inland, there was a 16-foot wall of debris where bodies were recovered.

Despite the best of science, the potential for devastation of hurricanes remains subjective.

“If people don’t want to leave, we ask that they give us information for next of kin,” Goodman said. “Smart people leave.”

Charlie Hall can be reached at (252) 635-5667 or chall@ freedomenc.com.