When a hurricane misses an area, there is always a collective sigh of relief.
When one actually pays a visit there is lots of extra work and some lessons to be learned.
Certainly Cape Carteret and the beaches of Emerald Isle have survived many storms including Irene which is when I first started writing this article back in August 2010.
The worst I saw from Irene was the shed roof peeled off at Winberry’s produce. I know many in the area were ready for even more than the lengthy beating that Irene gave us. Still these pictures and the YouTube I share at end show that a storm like Irene is not to be ignored.
However, Florence, eight years later, was a different story. Many people lost their homes from Florence. We lost a few pieces of soffit and a few cardboard boxes that were on the floor of our garage. Over fifteen years Florence was the only storm to even put a few inches of water on our garage floor. Our house was seven feet above the garage floor. I say was because in 2021 we moved inland to be closer to our grandchildren.
Irene was our first serious hurricane in our first five years that my wife and I have lived along the Southern Outer Banks. While we had a hurricane emergency kit almost from day one on the coast, its evolution to something much more sophisticated had only begun when Irene came ashore near Cape Lookout on Saturday, August 27.
There was nothing magic in those early preparations for Irene, mostly we used common sense and listened to the experts some of whom had been on the shore for their whole lives. By the time Florence hit on September 11, 2018, we were really prepared but even so we followed the mandatory evacuation orders. Most I talked who did not evacuate were sorry they didn’t.
This list is in not particular order does not replace common sense. I can tell you that hurricanes love to hit at night. There is nothing scarier than being in the dark during a hurricane so the top of my list is light.
Over the years we gathered a couple of LED battery powered lanterns and a number of very compact LED flashlights. These emergency lights are the first level of defense to make sure the lack of power does not end up being any worse than it is normally. Over time we added power bricks for our phones, small rechargeable light. After our move from the coast we got a rechargeable power station that will run both our refrigerator and Internet service. Likely the power station is a response to us leaving our generator at the coast.
Part of additions to our emergency kit before we left the coast was a fancy emergency radio from Amazon. It can be powered with anything from a hand crank to solar. It supplements our battery powered transistor radio. Not surprisingly power outages happen even away from the coast.
Next on our important items list are a couple of coolers- one big, one not so big. It takes forty pounds of ice to completely fill both coolers. In the case of Irene, I loaded them with ice on Friday afternoon before Irene arrived. The automatic ice machine in Peletier had a large line so I drove across the bridge and got my ice in Emerald Isle just before they closed the bridge because of their evacuation order. That gave me a chance to go take a few pictures of the Bogue Inlet Pier as the first big waves were hitting it.
When the power started flickering on Saturday morning, we took items out of the refrigerator that we planned to use in the few meals and put them in the small cooler. It is probably no surprise to those who know me, but even back in 2010 we kept a small emergency plastic container of Duke’s mayonnaise.
The big cooler stays closed as a reserve for ice. Even after over 48 hours it still had over 75% of its ice on Monday morning long after Irene. We were lucky during Irene. The power went off just before midnight and was off for less than four hours.
We always tried to cook some easy to prepare protein for sandwiches the day before a hurricane is schedule to visit. We also stock up on tuna fish, peanut butter, and bread to go with the canned soup, salmon, and chicken that is usually on hand. Paper plates and cups along with plastic utensils and a fresh box of large garbage bags make life a lot easier after a storm especially if the power is out for an extended period of time.
We have always installed our grills to get fuel from the large propane tank that feeds our fireplace and other appliances. If the power stays out, you cook on the gas grill unless you run the generator which in our case allowed us to use our gas stove. If you don’t have a gas grill, get something easier than a charcoal grill. You can have storms that bring extended rain. A single burner propane cooking stove can make life easier than trying to get a charcoal grill going.
In addition to food, a stockpile of water is critical. We try to keep at least two flats of bottled water on hand all the time. After Irene, we bought from Amazon a six gallon drinking-water-safe water container. Whenever a storm was close enough to make us feel uncomfortable, we would fill a few one gallon jugs that we had around. We also bought a dozen small bottles of water in case we had to leave by car. We planned to have over ten gallons of water for the two of us. Filling our bathtub with water before a storm was another regular step. You might need water to flush toilets. Keeping buckets ready to fill whenever a situation looks like it was going from bad to worse is important. In our later years at the coast, we even added some water purification tools and food safe bags that could be used with five gallon plastic buckets.
An important step in storm preparation is to secure any important personal papers- passports, birth certificates, papers for insurance, banks, and loans. We have two quick-exit, emergency brief cases and a backpack that carries four laptops. We also have a camera bag for three cameras, various chargers and USB thumb drives/portable SSD drives. The quick exit strategy also includes at least $400 in cash.
When Irene came, we had a freezer full of frozen homegrown tomatoes, and packed with meat. We decided to buy a Troy-Bilt generator. We got one from Lowe’s well before the storm so there were still lots of choices. We used our generator a little over three hours with Irene. In the eleven years after that, it was never used for a power outage. However, I had to start it at least twice a year and keep lots of ethanol-free fuel around for it.
With the generator, you need spare gas cans. We ended up with three five gallon cans. That gave us enough ethanol free gas to run the generator sporadically for four or five days without siphoning gas from the boat or truck. Our generator performed perfectly. It always started on the first pull but I always turned the fuel shut off valve and ran the generator until there was no gas in the carburetor to create a mess. I also used fuel stabilizer.
For the Irene emergency, I wired a couple of circuits so that we had the refrigerator, lights, coffee, and a toaster oven. Well before hurricane Florence arrived, we had installed a proper external plug for the generator and the proper switch with lock out to go from the power grid to the generator. We could have had emergency electricity for a long time with just the boat gas. I eventually added a battery powered pump that would have allowed me to easily access our boat’s gas.
Make no mistake, a generator is a lot of work. If it is going to get really bad, you are likely better off getting out of town. When it does get really bad, you might have power, but there are likely no other services including doctors.
We also kept a large rechargeable spotlight since we lived along the water, and it could be possible we needed to figure out how high the water had risen during the night. Obviously we also stockpiled batteries of all sizes.
Our homes have probably always had a little more than the normal first aid supplies that most homes have. We lived on an isolated farm for ten years, it shaped our preparedness well before hurricanes. Being boaters we also had at our disposal the emergency gear for our boat which included a larger first aid kit, flares, emergency marine radio, and emergency noise makers.
It is absolutely critical to not forget to get cash from the ATMs while the power is there. When the first restaurants come back, sometimes they will only take cash. It is important to check on your supply of medicines, fill your vehicles with gasoline, and make sure that all of your bills which might come due during the storm are paid ahead of time.
Actual preparations at the house involved bringing inside any items that might blow or float away and using bungee cords to secure heavy deck furniture to the deck railings. You would be surprised what can float in a hurricane surge.
For us the final thing was to put our boat on storm footing. We had a side pole lift which doesn’t have the boat suspended from cables or slings. Our skiff sat on two metal arms. Sixteen years of experience, including Irene and Floyd demonstrated that our boat was safer on this kind of lift than on a trailer.
All our planning made us feel lots better but it never got bad enough for us to use all our gear. Still I think it was well worth being thoroughly prepared for all the storms even if you like us end up leaving for a bad one like Florence. Solid preparations mean the next time around is usually a snap and if you are caught off guard, you still close to being prepared
You alway hope you don’t have to go on full alert status. However, Mother Nature is truly unpredictable, so do whatever you have to do in order to stay safe which includes leaving when told to do so.
If you want to get a taste of the rains and winds that we experienced for hours, check out this YouTube video that I did during the height of Irene. The only pictures I have of Florence are the aftermath which you can find in this post. One last piece of advice, be cognizant of how the storm interacts with evacuation routes. There are often times when flooding is worse inland than one the coast. More than one long time resident told me to watch the rivers if I evacuated because the window to get back to coast was often short. Inland flooding often was much worse and lasted longer than coastal flooding. We barely got back to the coast before the roads closed after Florence.
