Hurricane Isabelle
(September 2003)
A long time it’s been since I’ve sat down on the beach and written, but now it’s on a new beach, in a new dwelling, with a new means for dropping down the words. A new porch littered with debris from the Harrison Pier that smashed against the beaches of Willoughby when Hurricane Isabelle turned her head from North Carolina towards Hampton Roads…leaving me with over a ton of treated lumber that sits just a few feet away. The pilings span several miles along the beach to the west, all the way to the Hampton Bridge Tunnel, where full sections lie like ruins on the shoreline.
The hurricane was a memorable event…
That Monday, I finished my morning shift at the television station when I was informed I was going to Cape Hatteras that night. I raced home, packed a bag that would last me two weeks if needed, and took whatever hurricane precautions I could, placing photographs and important items on the second floor hoping they wouldn’t be floating somewhere down the St. James River when I returned from my adventure. Navigating through rush-hour traffic on I-64, I finally managed to hit Highway 158 for the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the road I took not more than two weeks earlier for my personal excursion and escape from Virginia. I passed all the “now” familiar sites in Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, and Nags Head and entered the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, bound for Buxton. The ride was breathtaking with the sun setting along the sound to the west. The seas had already began to pick up as I watched huge waves crash onto the barren beaches while passing over the Oregon Inlet. I arrived in Buxton by nightfall and checked into the Comfort Inn. After shooting some video of people preparing homes and stores for the storm, I settled into a few Samuel Adams, cable television, and the sound of the ocean erupting on the beach less than a quarter mile away. The morning would arrive soon and my hurricane vacation had only just begun.
Tuesday morning we did our live shots at the tourist shop across from our hotel, showing the few residents who were evacuating at that early hour. After breakfast, we did a feature piece on a Buxton family who were preparing their home before leaving Cape Hatteras. However, they were leaving a friend of the family to stay at the home and ride out the storm. The guy was an aging Jeff Spicoli surfer-type who rationalized, “if it gets too bad, I’ll just put on my wetsuit and jump in the bathtub.”
During the morning, I went with our satellite truck driver, Brian Tulwits, to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and National Park. While shooting video of the powerful surf crashing onto the beach, I got a call from a morning radio show in Portland, Maine. They got my number from a local radio news broadcaster I know, Nikki Reed from FM99, and wanted me to do a live-phoner about the storm. So, I did the phoner for this station in Maine, and got hammered by a wave during the call...true live journalism.
My shoes would remain wet for the remainder of the week so I turned to the reliable sandals I got from a discount shoe store in Norfolk. They didn’t let me down…sandals in a hurricane proved more efficient than shoes and socks…
I spent the remainder of Tuesday wandering between the beach and my hotel room as the media crews began to descend on Buxton. The storm was still a day and a half away from landfall but the weather had changed rapidly, bringing back memories of tornado season in the Midwest.
Wednesday morning we did our live shots from the beach, sharing the SAT truck with a crew from Time-Warner’s News 14 from Raleigh and an NBC affiliate from Charlotte owned by BELO, the company that owns my station. Barefoot and in cutoff shorts, I ran around the beach for our multiple live hits, having a good time with it all, then loaded up the truck for Kill Devil Hills, where I would ride out the storm. Al Roker from NBC’s Today Show was staying in our motel and starting his liveshot at the lighthouse as I left Buxton.
Upon arrival in Kill Devil Hills, we did a piece on some folks in Kitty Hawk that were preparing to take on Isabelle. They would later be among those in Kitty Hawk that would take the worst of the storm on the Northern Outer Banks. I cut and fed my package back to Norfolk and enjoyed the rest of the evening watching the dozens of SAT trucks, from both local markets and the networks, setting up and preparing for the storm around the Holiday Inn and Ramada hotels. I met Jim Cantori from the Weather Channel and literally ran into Al Roker at the Holiday Inn.
“Hey, what’s up man,” I said to Al as I bumped into him.
“Hey, what’s up,” he replied. And that, was basically that.
Enjoying the cable television and stocked refrigerator in my beachfront room, I watched the winds and sea pick up. I knew when I awoke at 2 a.m. that it would be on…and I was right.
I climbed the dune in front of my patio at 2 a.m. and began shooting video as the winds ripped through me, howling along the coastline. I looked across the backs of the hotels and saw that I was likely the only person awake at that time. After shooting, I went to the SAT truck, edited a short piece of video and waited for my crew to arrive. After a few cups of coffee, they did and we set up for our day on a fifth floor balcony in the Ramada Inn.
My reporter, Joe Flanagan, and I did hits every 15 minutes as the storm descended upon us. Winds gusting over a hundred-miles-an-hour beat on us as we dangled on the hotel’s balcony, some sixty feet over the beach below. Our anchor and another photographer relieved us some time after noon, and Joe and I went to the beach to shoot a “look-live” for later.
When we hit the beach from the rear entrance of the Holiday Inn, the winds were throwing debris and sand all over the place. I walked out into the current and was lifted about six feet. When I landed, I stopped to get my bearings and asked myself, “did that really happen? Did I really just fly?” We shot our “look-live” and headed back to the truck, where I edited and fed the piece back to the station. I was, at that point, “off-the-clock,” so I wandered around the parking lot and beach, shooting video and taking pictures, with an occasional stop back at my room to dry off and get a drink. I had to switch rooms, as my beachfront place had flooded. Around twelve o’ clock, my friends at KSN in Joplin called me and I did a live-phone interview for their noon show. I can’t wait to see that aircheck. During our morning adventures on the Ramada’s fifth floor, I also did a live radio phoner with the station in Portland, Maine. My reporter, Joe Flanagan joked that I was getting more airtime than he was. The winds began slowing around sunset, and without power, I returned to my room and fell asleep to the sound of the wind making its last attempt to whip around Kill Devil Hills.
I awoke the next morning to see what Isabelle had done.
Kitty Hawk was like a war zone. Highway 12 was covered several feet in sand with sections of the road that had crumbled into the sea creating new inlets from the ocean. Huge slabs of concrete broke deep into the earth and houses had been swallowed by the sand and sea. With a severely damaged camera, I shot some unreal video that would later be used by the networks. When my job in the Outer Banks was done, I told my assistant news director that my camera was shot and that I needed to see if my new home was underwater. He told me to come on home.
After driving along Highway 158 through a most amazing path of destruction, I arrived in Norfolk, checked in, and headed for home. Willoughby had been hammered pretty good. The Harrison Fishing Pier had been destroyed by the storm and scatterred along the beach all the way to the Hampton Bridge Tunnel. It had stood only a mile from my house and now was completely destroyed. When I got to my house, I was surprised to find that we hadn’t taken on one drop of water. However, the backyard was filled with about a ton of lumber from the pier. Piles up to six feet lay against the back of the house and our protective sand dune had completely vanished. From the house, you could now see directly to the sea. While the view is much improved, there is no longer any protection if another storm decides to roll through.
So that’s the story. Because of our brave and noble work, the powers to be gave us a paid day off and a bonus, which I used to buy this laptop that I am typing on right now. It was one of the greatest experiences I have been involved in at work. I explained it to someone as “one of the best paid vacations I ever had, but the weather sucked…”
“let me tell ya ‘bout the hurricane…”
