Oriental residents busy battening down for Hanna

Oriental calls itself the Sailboat Capital of North Carolina, and today most of the boats are being secured or moved to safer "hurricane hole" locations in advance of tropical storm Hanna.

Residents are busy securing homes and yards, readying generators and fine-tuning chain saws.

Town Manager Wyatt Cutler said employees were going down the hurricane check list - filling water tanks, getting diesel fuel, bringing in chairs and tables from the town park, getting chain saws ready and making contact with the town's debris removal company.

Some people see Hanna as an early preparation for the possibility of other Atlantic Ocean storms next week and beyond.

"This is good preparation of the possibility of Ike," said Elizabeth Harris, a longtime resident and hurricane veteran who now lives off Kershaw Road outside town. "This one could be not much more than a northeaster, but when you are looking at winds between 55 and 60 and more than twice that with Ike, it's a big difference. So, this is good preparation."

Oriental Marina manager Tom McIlhenny said all the boats at his marina were gone, relocated to safer places  in the Oriental area.

"At this point, all the "hurricane hole" marinas that are obviously protected, are either sold out in terms of water slips or have pulled enough boats that they consider their yards to be full," he said. Among the safe areas are Minnesott Beach and River Dunes.

"We tell people they need to find a much more secure location that we are, and we find them opportunities," he said.

McIlhenny said there was little radio traffic or activity on the Pamlico Sound.

"People are planning early, and with these storms coming off the African coast back-to-back-to-back, everybody is kind of hunker down and really wait and see," he said. "We are watching all these guys, but this is an excellent preparation for everybody because its been two years since we've had something of these magnitudes coming through."

Except for a few rooms, the marina inn is empty. This storm and the threat of more storms will be bad for tourism, he said.

"It's an economic disaster for tourism in eastern North Carolina, simply because everybody has called and canceled," he said. Tourism drops off the charts several days before a storm and depending on the damage, it can take a week to recover and expect tourists to return.

If a series of storms make their way to North Carolina, it could disrupt tourism for as much as a month.