As the storm crashed ashore, they abandoned their mobile home for a two-story frame house. Before long, it was collapsing under the waves and “the house was falling in, and all the furniture was falling out through the floor,” Helms recalled Monday.
He thought the roof of a neighboring cinderblock house might be safer, but soon a big wave went over that house. When the wave went out, the house was gone, Helms said.
“There was another house — a wooden house that was coming down the road more or less — and it had some guy in that thing and he’s hollering for help,” he said.
Helms pushed a mattress through the top-floor window, and they hung on as it bobbed in the raging water.
What lessons is he applying now that a similarly powerful hurricane is coming?
“I didn’t feel like it was going to be bad enough to leave,” Helms said. “I don’t know. I just felt better about staying here than I did leaving.”
He doesn’t have a safer destination in mind, and having recently broken ribs in a fall, Helms fears getting stuck as thousands abandon the coast.
Meanwhile, Aida Havel and her husband, John, made preparations Monday to evacuate their home in the Outer Banks village of Salvo, where they’ve lived for about a year. They are heading about 200 miles inland to their former hometown of Raleigh, where Hurricane Fran hit in 1996. Fran took a similar inland path to what forecasters are calling for with Florence.
“I had a tree that smashed my car down in my driveway,” Aida Havel said. “Even though that was 22 years ago, I have never gotten over it.”
The throngs of vehicles heading inland demonstrate the big difference between Hazel’s impact and the damage Florence could cause, Barnes said.
“Today, we have thousands and thousands of permanent residents on our barrier beaches,” he said. “It’s a totally different scenario with regard to human impact.”
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