HURRICANE EARL: Preparation worth the effort despite ‘non-event'

ORIENTAL — If you compare Hurricane Earl to a prizefighter, he didn’t answer the opening bell in Pamlico County.

Still, boaters and shopkeepers said the prep work — moving and tying down boats and removing furniture and other items from harm’s way — is a necessary evil when a hurricane comes knocking at this waterfront village.

“You have to because the consequences of it could be substantial,” said David Cox, a boat owner who visited the Oriental Yacht Club at 1 a.m. Friday to check on his 39-foot sailboat. “I was a little worried about storm surge, but it didn’t amount to anything. (Earl) certainly was a dud. But, you have to be prepared.”

Dan Steiger, the dock master at Whitaker Creek Marina, was busy keeping checks on everything there until 4 a.m., although boat owners at the 82-slip marina are responsible for securing their watercrafts. He said a number of boats were moved out to sheltered creeks, including some that went to the River Dunes marina, which has floating docks.

“It was really a non-event,” he said of Hurricane Earl, which skirted the North Carolina coast and produced minimal winds and no serious flooding in Oriental. He did cut off the electricity to the marina docks shortly before midnight when the water rose and lapped at the deck.

Steiger’s wife, Ann, waited throughout the night at the couple’s second-story apartment on Hodges Street.

“There was hardly any rain or wind,” she said, adding that she sympathized with nearby shop keepers on the waterfront who worked frantically to get their wares off the floor in case of flooding.

She said the biggest excitement of her night was when she went out at 3 a.m. to check on a stray cat she had been feeding in recent weeks and encountered a not-so-friendly opossum having a free breakfast.

By early Friday morning, people were walking dogs and bicycling through the village streets, the usual fare on any day.

Buster Kenny and Edward Mannina were among a group of sailboat owners who gathered for breakfast on the outdoor deck at the Oriental Harbor Deli and Bistro.

Kenny, who lives in Cary, came down Thursday to secure his 30-foot Catalina, and found that friends had done most of the heavy-lifting of stripping the decks of anything that could be damaged by high winds. His chore Friday was to put it all back into sailing readiness.

He was among the chorus of boaters who were glad the storm fizzled.

“There is no better feeling in this world than to have been shot at and missed,” he laughed. “Hoping for the best is what we do best.”

Mannina, who lives on his 41-foot sailboat, secured the vessel and left town.

“For those of us who ran, it was merely good exercise,” he said. “I went to my favorite hurricane hole — Wayfarer Cove in Minnesott Beach — and it was full.”

Earl’s effects on the county’s most populated waterfront town were reflective of the county as a whole, according to David Spruill, the county’s emergency management director.

“Nothing really happened all night,” he said. “It was kind of an eventless night to be quite honest.”

He supported the view that the preparation by the county and private sector was necessary.

“A lot of people will say this was a dud, but this (storm) was so close you just didn’t know,” he said. “All it had to do was jog 20 or 30 miles one way and it could have really been a lot worse. We just couldn’t ignore it.”

Spruill said the storm preparation was a good exercise for emergency responders. There were more than 60 people who went to the county’s emergency shelter at Pamlico Community College, and it was the first time the shelter had accepted pets — four dogs and four cats.

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