Florence devastates hearts, homes in Trent Court

Sept. 21--Earlier this week, as state and national politicians were being chauffeured around New Bern to take in the destruction wrought by Hurricane Florence, the residents of Trent Court were putting on gloves, picking up shovels and tackling that destruction head on.

By Thursday morning, piles of furniture, appliances and bedding lined almost every square inch of the sidewalks in the low-income housing community spaced along New Bern's waterfront, all of it soaked through and spotted with mold from the storm surge and torrential rainfall that inundated the area last week.

Residents said they had never experienced anything like what came their way on the night of Sept. 13 and the days that followed.

Sitting on her porch Thursday, Cheryl Reed spoke with neighbors as workers moved in and out of her apartment, carrying one ruined piece of her life after another to the trash pile out front. Reed, who moved to Trent Court in 2012 and serves as the president of the neighborhood's Residents' Council, said she was one of the few who decided to sit out the storm instead of evacuating.

"The water came up fast," said Reed, her weary eyes scanning the river visible just down the street. "My dog and I went upstairs at 8, so I didn't get the impact until something said 'Go and take a look down.' And when I looked down my rugs were floating, and I just went 'Oh my goodness.'"

Reed said the water eventually rose halfway up the screen door of her front porch, a height of approximately five feet from the surrounding street.

Eventually, through the efforts of her sister as well as New Bern Alderman Jameesha Harris and several others, Reed was convinced to abandon her apartment and seek shelter at Trent Park Elementary School, where she remains indefinitely. Most of her neighbors who chose to stay had to be removed by boat, she said.

According to Reed, 140 of Trent Court's 218 units were damaged in the storm.

"They took out my sofas and stuff and mold was all over everything. I've only been able to save some stuff upstairs, water didn't make it up there. It made it up to the second stair in the middle of the night, that was about 2 a.m," she remembered.

Reed said New Bern Housing Authority Executive Director Martin Blaney has been giving regular updates to evacuees at her shelter.

"He's been talking with people from HUD. He told us it's not good news. The main thing is we're not going to be able to be in these (apartments) again, even when the city comes and checks the electric," she said.

Reed said there were still approximately 100 people in the Trent Park shelter.

"We had people who were trying to get to us a few nights ago and they got trapped between Vanceboro and New Bern. We were waiting that evening for like 100 people," she said.

The loss she's seen at Trent Court, said Reed, is still hard to put into words.

"It devastates your spirit," she remarked. "Because people are not just here because they want to be, people are here because they can afford to be here and not have large light bills and extra overhead. And people are here because they grew up here and it's still home. My home is my home."

Across the road from Reed's apartment, residents and Housing Authority members were busy methodically cleaning out the waterlogged remains of their neighbor's homes.

Bobbie LeCraft, who moved to Trent Court nearly two decades ago, said water had risen nearly four feet in his apartment.

"I lost everything in the house. This is the worst I've ever seen," he stated.

LeCraft said he was currently living with one of his three sons.

"I'm pretty lucky I have somewhere I can stay right now; lot of these people don't," he noted.

Tonya Jones said she evacuated before the storm hit and was able to stay at the hotel where she works, the SpringHill Marriott in New Bern, until Wednesday. Jones said she's currently living with the mother of her daughter's boyfriend until she can make other arrangements.

Though she was able to save most of her clothes from upstairs, the bottom floor of her apartment was an almost total loss.

"There's mold and everything in the apartment. Everything in the kitchen got messed up, I had to throw away my pots and pans and everything in my drawers that got wet. My refrigerator was laying on its side on the floor," she said.

"That's all my stuff right there," added Jones, pointing to a pile near the curb. "Just about everybody I know lost their stuff."

Jones said at this point, she has no idea how to restore her life to normalcy.

"I'm trying to see what FEMA's going to talk about and then I've been trying to put in applications for apartments. It's just me and my kids, we don't have no family here," she said.

Helping Jones sort through the wreckage of her apartment, neighbor and Massachusetts native Harry Brown said he got "a little bit" of rain water in his apartment but managed to avoid the worst of the storm surge.

"I consider this a disaster, God knows I do. These apartments are done, these people can't go back in there," he said.

Brown said the residents of Trent Court need immediate assistance to find new housing.

"They should have these people in a hotel room, I don't care what anyone says. A lot of people don't have nowhere else to go, they just paid their rent and everything. People need to know this stuff. A lot of the people out here still haven't come back yet. It's crazy," explained Brown.

Melanie Burton, who lives in Trent Court's F block, said the mold-saturated conditions in the neighborhood had made it impossible for her sons to return to the home they've lived in since 2005.

"My oldest son has asthma. I couldn't let him come back to get his stuff out because the last time I bought him here he started getting headaches and wheezing, just in the little time we were trying to get some clothes out. My 10 year old has seizures, I'm not going to bring him back in here."

Burton said she and her family are currently staying with a friend.

"I have no clue what I'm going to do," she commented.

At the other end of Trent Court, the section nearest the river, Sylvester Simmons tugged on his blue "Jesus is My Boss" cap and surveyed the photo albums, CDs, and pill bottles that littered the watery ruin of his bedroom floor. Having moved to Trent Court two years ago, Simmons said he had been forced to take up residence with a friend.

"I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay there," he said. "I lost everything. I've been trying to contact the Red Cross but I can't get up with them."

Back at Cheryl Reed's apartment, Tharesa Lee, a consultant with New Bern Housing Authority, stopped by to check on Reed and her neighbors.

Lee has been instrumental in developing New Bern's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. Part of that plan calls for the residents of Trent Court, over half of whom are located within the 100-year floodplain, to be moved to new, subsidized and low-income housing that would be constructed near New Bern's Pembroke community. The move would allow the Housing Authority to tear down Trent Court's buildings, the oldest of which was constructed in 1941, and replace them with a new mixed-income community.

Though New Bern Aldermen in July voted to have a parcel of land appraised for the Pembroke site, the relocation effort is still in the initial planning stages.

"Housing matters. I've been speaking it and speaking it to people and everybody tells me 'Oh, it's about more than housing.' But I worked on the Choice Neighborhood Plan for two years and I've grown to love these people," said Lee, putting her arm around Reed.

"We have to increase our affordable housing stock and do it quickly. If we'd have had enough housing in this city...," she said, her voice trailing off.

Nodding her head in agreement, Reed said her friends and neighbors will need all the help they can get to recover some measure of what's been lost to Hurricane Florence.

"For us, it's kind of like when people die. You wonder what to say, but kind words always help."

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