Lessons from Hurricane Florence, mitigate future storms

Aug. 7--Historian and downtown resident Nelson McDaniel has a message for North Carolina leaders that channels a Beatles tune: Come Together, Right now...

Over hurricanes.

Dozens of homes in the historic district were damaged by the historic tide surge during Hurricane Florence in 2018, particularly along East Front, New and Change streets. Some residents in the district are still not back.

But, he said, it is past time that the region works together and find ways to mitigate the damage that floods do.

He and others have already taken what steps they can to mitigate damage; replacing crawl space vents with flood vents, designed to let flood water flow through more easily, filling in basements to limit the damage of floods and raising heating and air conditioning units above the ground.

But, he said, there are things that can be done by the government and society that will further reduce the damage a hurricane will do -- things that will make recovery easier for those without insurance or with smaller incomes.

McDaniel said that he and others have worked together to convince leaders to work toward larger projects for flood mitigation. He pointed to Norfolk as a model city that has done this work, and to European nations such as Holland -- a nation with 27 percent of its land below sea-level, whose mitigation efforts legendarily started with the little boy who stuck a finger in a leak in a dike. "The Dutch decided back in the '50s that it was cheaper to prevent damage than to pay for (repairing) damage," he observed.

McDaniel said some mitigation steps in other areas have included sea walls and recreational facilities that can serve as overflow basins. He does not offer specific suggestions for New Bern, however. "I'm not an expert," he explained, and added that flood mitigation has to be designed specifically for each area where it is used. "What works in New Jersey may not work here. What works in Holland may not be what works here. But the principle is the same: you have to divert (the water)."

Holland, he said, is willing to send representatives to the area at no cost to discuss mitigation initiatives, but said it isn't easy to bring about, in part because of a lack of cooperation by governmental entities. "These mitigations make your house water resistant (though not waterproof)," he said. "We need a regional approach, and our city and county don't have a great record of working together.

"We've gone to Washington DC, we've met with people," he said. "We've tried to get our city and county people to meet with those same people. It's not that the city's doing nothing, but for once they've got to cooperate with the areas around.

"We've got to get out of the mode of just paying for it," he said. A flood mitigation would save both the city, the county, and residents hundreds of millions of dollars and economic loss by limiting resulting damage. "And if we can save hundreds of millions of dollars," McDaniel asks, "Shouldn't we do it?"

McDaniel's residence on New Street -- the Coor Bishop McDaniel House, built in 1811 -- is built six feet above ground level, but he still wound up with a foot of water on the first floor during the hurricane.

He said much of the damage took place from flooding under the house. "A number of beams from 1810, 1890, snapped in half,' he said. The churning water in his crawl space, with nowhere to go, lifted and dropped the house a couple of inches several times, wreaking havoc on the structure.

McDaniel said he arrived home, jet-lagged from a visit to France, the day before the hurricane and spent most of that day taking books and smaller furniture items up the stairs, while elevating other furniture he could not move.

Because most of his furniture was old and not of pressed wood, he was able to simply wash much of it after the flood with a vinegar-and-water mixture. In the front, older end of his house, his floor was salvageable and the walls, made of plaster, were fine once they were dried out by removing some exterior siding and insulation.

The back of the house needed more extensive work, however, and much of his wiring, plumbing and his heating and cooling system had to be replaced. Floors, cabinets and walls had to come down.

McDaniel said storms are generally compared to the worst in anyone's memory -- the Hurricane of 1933, which came before names were generally given to the storms. Even in that one, he said, water never got closer than a foot to the floor of his home.

He considered raising his house, as some others have, but decided against it: the house is small in comparison to many others, he said, and it is already elevated by six feet. Florence was the first time he knows of when water ever got into the house during a storm. Besides, "It's such a small house it would eventually look like an eraser on a pencil. It would look silly."

He was not able to return for about a year, and now his house looks as close to new as a 190-year-old house can. "It's amazing what $200,000 will do," he said.

But, for McDaniel and his neighbors, his battle is far from done.

For one, insurance has paid for only 25 percent of his needed repairs. "Many people are engaged in a legal tug of war with insurance companies," he said. "I had to try. "I thought it was very unfair that I paid premiums for all those years and then the adjuster, in my opinion, was very unfair."

But McDaniel added that, while Florence was bad for him, "All my neighbors agree we are not victims. We were severely inconvenienced, but... the victims are the ones who never got their homes back or lost their jobs from the economic impact.

"My heart goes out to those people who weren't insured. The same water goes to those people as it does (to) me."

The same flood waters that devastated the historic district devastated other areas as well, he pointed out. "It doesn't know political boundaries; it doesn't know social or racial boundaries. Duffyfield is in this too."

New Bern is on a peninsula between two rivers, and not that far from the ocean, he pointed out. "So, floods will happen. You can't stop them."

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