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North Carolina's Hurricane History
Third Edition
by Jay Barnes
304 pp., 253 photos, 45 maps, 3 tables, index
$19.95 paperback, $34.95 hardcover
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The following excerpt is from the book North Carolina's Hurricane History. Third Edition, by Jay Barnes. Copyright 2001 The University of North Carolina Press. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without the express permission of the Press.
In the days following the dissipation of Tropical Storm Dennis, the skies over eastern North Carolina returned to their normal pattern for late summer -- hot, humid, and peppered with frequent afternoon thunderstorms. Rivers, streams, and ditches across the eastern counties flowed heavily with water from Dennis's rains. Saturated soils took in what they could, but gave up excess to flow downstream. More showers fell through early September, with some counties receiving as much as ten additional inches over the course of one week. These rains refilled creeks and swales, and set the stage for the arrival of a more ominous rainmaker -- and monstrous flood producer -- that would later become recognized as the greatest disaster in North Carolina history.
Hurricane Floyd emerged from the central Atlantic at the peak of the busy 1999 season and developed into the year's most awesome hurricane spectacle. It was indeed a very busy year, amidst an extremely active period of tropical activity. The 1999 season produced twelve named storms and eight hurricanes, five of which were major hurricanes. In fact, the five major storms that year -- Bret, Cindy, Floyd, Gert, and Lenny -- all reached category-four strength -- a feat never before observed since reliable record-keeping began in 1886. And, the busy 1999 season capped off a dizzying five-year stretch that produced more Atlantic hurricanes than any similar period in recorded history. From 1995 through 1999, forecasters at the Hurricane Center worked around the clock to keep up with sixty-five named storms, forty-one hurricanes, and twenty major hurricanes with winds exceeding 110 mph. A number of these storms eventually affected North Carolina, including Hurricane Fran, which established itself as the new standard for Tar Heel hurricanes when it rolled across the state in 1996. But records were made to be broken, and it didn't take long -- just three years -- for Hurricane Floyd to replace Fran as the state's foremost weather event.
Left: The only way to fully appreciate the scope of Floyd's floods was from the air. On the morning following the storm, damage assessment teams took to the skies to survey the breadth of the disaster. Hardest hit were neighborhoods along the Neuse, Tar, and Northeast Cape Fear Rivers. (Photo courtesy of FEMA)
Right: Lonnie Smith, a twenty-three-year Marine stationed in New Orleans,
drove over 1,000 miles toward Hubert to check on his family before
floodwaters stalled his minivan on N.C. 258. Two fellow Marines used their
truck to pull Smith from the flood. Driving in floods is hazardous, and
well over half the fatalities attributed to Floyd in North Carolina
involved motorists attempting to cross submerged roads. (Photo by Don
Bryan; courtesy of the Jacksonville Daily News)
At first look, Floyd was not a meteorological marvel when it came ashore in eastern North Carolina. The storm's loss of strength before landfall was a blessing to those who had watched it teeter near category-five territory just days before. Winds gusted above 100 mph in numerous locations, but wind-related damages were not significant. Still, at the New Hanover County Emergency Operations Center a peak gust of 130 mph was reported, and an instrument atop the eight-story Blockade Runner Hotel in Wrightsville Beach produced an unofficial reading of 138 mph. A more reliable measurement of a 112 mph gust was recorded at Kure Beach at 2:20 A.M. on the sixteenth, just moments before the eye of the storm passed by. The automated Frying Pan Shoals station, located about thirty miles southeast of Cape Fear, reported sustained winds of near 100 mph for a twenty-minute period.
Without question, Floyd's winds, tides, and tornadoes were dramatic and destructive, particularly along some portions of the coast. But residents across more than two dozen counties experienced the greater threat that would later create the Floyd disaster. It was, of course, the unending rain that accumulated in ditches, creeks, and rivers and became the great flood. The rains, which in some areas lasted more than sixty hours, fell over a region where soils were already saturated by the previous downpours of hurricane Dennis. River levels were already high when Floyd's first steady showers began to fall. As they gathered continuously updated reports of rain accumulations across the region, Weather Service officials and emergency planners prepared a steady flow of around-the-clock flood watches and warnings.
The excessive rainfall that swamped eastern North Carolina just before and during Floyd was the result of the storm's massive size and the timing of its approach. A strong trough of low pressure had moved in from the west as the hurricane came ashore, wringing extra moisture from the atmosphere and dumping it over land. Hurricane researcher William Gray described the trough's influence to the News and Observer: "The same kind of thing happened during Hurricane Hazel in 1954. It is a particularly bad weather pattern that can transform a relatively weak hurricane [into] a terrible one, and a terrible one into a catastrophic one."
The magnitude of the flooding disaster became apparent in the hours and days after the heaviest rains passed. With no place for water to drain through saturated soils or overfilled rivers, floodwaters backed up into streets, homes, farms, businesses, and interstate highways. The waters rose quickly in some areas, more slowly in others. Many of the flood victims were taken by surprise -- some were asleep in their beds when they were awakened by the sensation of water on their backs. Others dealt with the worst flooding days after the storm when rivers finally reached their crests. Along Floyd's path and across at least a dozen Tar Heel counties, an epic flood held the entire population in its clutches.
Initial data from the USGS indicated that at least eleven of their monitoring sites in North Carolina exceeded 500-year flood levels. This term is used by hydrologists who use statistics to anticipate flood recurrence intervals. For a particular location, a 10-year flood has a 10 percent chance of occurring in a given year. A 100-year event has a 1 percent recurrence rate, and a 500-year flood has only a 0.2 chance of happening in a given year. But preliminary USGS data suggested that 500-year flood levels were reached in Ahoskie, Rocky Mount, Hilliardston, White Oak, Enfield, Tarboro, Lucama, Hookerton, Trenton, Chinquapin, and Freeland. Months after the storm, those 500-year flood estimates were revised by officials at the USGS. After reviewing many outdated and inaccurate flood maps, it was determined that Floyd may have been more of a 150-or 200-year flood.
But regardless of its place in history, the high water covered so many roads, bridges and highways that entire communities were cut off from the outside world. By the time the rivers crested, nearly all the major roads in Duplin, Jones, Pender, Greene, Lenoir, Craven, Pitt, and Edgecombe Counties were impassible. Among the major transportation arteries blocked by flooding were U.S. 70 in Kinston, U.S. 17 in Washington, Pollocksville, and portions of Brunswick County, U.S. 264 between Greenville and Washington, U.S. 64 in Edgecombe County, U.S. 24 in Beaulaville and Kenansville, I-40 in Pender County, and I-95 near Rocky Mount. At the peak of the flood, Department of Transportation officials reported that 1,400 eastern North Carolina roads were impassible. Bridges were washed out in dozens of places and asphalt crumbled in others, creating submerged driving hazards that were invisible to motorists. Across eastern North Carolina, 283 bridges were damaged by the storm, and 17 were completely washed away or undermined. The impassible roads complicated the disaster by slowing relief efforts in many cities, forcing drivers to make elaborate detours and delaying the delivery of food and supplies for days. Five shelters -- three in Edgecombe County and two in Pitt County -- were completely isolated by flooding and could only be supplied by helicopter. By late October, weeks after the storm, 232 of the state's roads were still closed to traffic.
Tragically, the submerged roads proved to be the most dangerous places to be in the disaster -- they were responsible for most of the storm-related deaths in North Carolina. Unfortunately, people tended to underestimate the depth of the water, the swiftness of the currents, and the risks associated with trying to drive over roads they couldn't see. Some of these dynamics were described in a report in the Virginian-Pilot, with help from FEMA and the American Red Cross:
Water weighs 62.4 pounds per cubic foot and typically flows downstream at 6 to 12 miles per hour. When a vehicle stalls in the water, the water's momentum is transferred to the vehicle. For each foot the water rises, 500 pounds of lateral force are applied to the vehicle.
The biggest factor, however, is buoyancy. For each foot the water rises up the side of the vehicle, it displaces 1,500 pounds of water. In effect, the car weighs 1,500 pounds less for each foot of rising water around it. In other words, 2 feet of water will carry away most vehicles.
Hurricane Floyd's catastrophic effects were not limited to just the Tar Heel state. As the storm rolled into eastern Virginia on the night of September 16, record rains fell across the Tideland region, resulting in severe flooding, rooftop rescues, and property destruction not unlike that experienced in North Carolina. Some vehicles swept from flooded highways capsized and sank. Even one Virginia state trooper in Southhampton County had to abandon her cruiser and swim to safety when she was swept off of U.S. 58. At one point, over 300 roads across the state were closed. A fifty-foot section of a road collapsed into Lake Powell when a dam broke near Williamsburg. Flooding was worst in Franklin, where nine to twelve feet of water filled the downtown district. Statewide, almost six thousand homes were damaged to some degree by the storm. In addition to at least one fatality linked to the flooding, two Virginians were killed by falling trees.
Though the economic impact of the hurricane in North Carolina was staggering, the heartbreaking loss of 52 lives in the state was the disaster's greatest tragedy. No other hurricane of the twentieth century had killed as many North Carolinians; in all of the state's recorded history only an unnamed hurricane in 1883 had killed more people (53). The report of 52 deaths came from the state medical examiner, though the National Hurricane Center's count was 56 direct deaths in the United States, including 35 in North Carolina. More than a dozen lives were lost in other states, including 6 in Pennsylvania, 6 in New Jersey, 3 in Virginia, 2 each in Delaware and New York, and 1 each in Connecticut and Vermont. Some media reports suggested that Floyd caused as many as 77 fatalities across the country. But no matter whose fatality figures are used, Floyd's death toll was still the largest of any U.S. hurricane since Agnes swept from Florida to the Northeast in 1972, killing 122.
In North Carolina, reports of fatalities began to trickle in during the first hours after the storm made landfall. Then, as the flooding worsened and roads became lakes, frustrated drivers fell prey to swiftly-moving currents, and the list of storm victims grew longer. Among all the painful lessons learned from the Floyd disaster, none was more critical than understanding the deadly consequences of driving through floodwaters. Well over half of the state's storm-related fatalities happened when motorists attempted to drive over submerged roads.
Most of the deaths occurred within the first few days, but because the high waters lingered, reports of fatalities continued to emerge weeks after the storm. Understandably, most of the dead were victims of freshwater flooding in inland areas. In a summary report on Floyd, the Hurricane Center noted that 86 percent of the deaths were due to inland flooding, 55 percent were vehicle-related, and 80 were male. These figures follow a trend that has emerged in recent decades, wherein most hurricane deaths are caused by freshwater flooding away from the coast -- a far cry from earlier decades, when powerful storms drove storm surges into unprepared coastal communities, killing hundreds.
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