New Bern family learns to live with ‘new normal’ following hurricane

Feb. 28-- Feb. 28--The sign on the Byrne family's front porch reads, "This is my happy place." And though it's a message most visitors would find hard to square with the all but ruined house it's attached to, it's one the five Maryland transplants have managed to sustain through one of the most trying times in their family's life.

Like all but a handful of the houses on Franks Avenue just north of Bridgeton, the Byrne's home flooded on the night of September 13, 2018, when Hurricane Florence inundated the area with pummeling rain and wind. Storm surge from the Neuse River, just a stone's throw from their back porch, covered the Byrne's yard and rose several feet into their home, destroying in a matter of hours what the family had worked more than a year to build. Five months later, the water line is still visible halfway up the dishwasher and closet doors.

"We had just finished remodeling. We bought the house in 2017 and moved in eight months ago. We had one bathroom left to finish," said Tim Byrne, standing in the small RV camper in his front yard that has served as a makeshift home for himself and his wife, son, daughter, and mother-in-law for the last four months.

The Byrnes have spent their days since Hurricane Florence largely undoing their hard work from the previous year, tearing out the water warped floor laminate and carrying mildewed furniture to the road. The majority of their belongings, what they were able to salvage, now take up less than the space of one corner room.

But the Byrnes are quick to point out how much worse it could have been. Having decided to ride out the storm, they quickly changed their minds when the sound of rushing water behind their house grew unnervingly loud.

"It was like 2:00 in the morning and I woke everybody up and was like, 'We've got to go right now,'" remembered Tim's wife, Razell. The couple quickly gathered up their two children, Riezen, 14 at the time, and Dezton, 12, as well as Leah Dobbs, Razell's mother, and evacuated to Maryland.

"My neighbor was sending me pictures of the house. They were taking canoes down our road. It was unbelievable," remembered Tim.

"We were watching it on the news," he added. "There's nothing like seeing your town get flooded when you're six hours away."

When Tim and Razell returned the following Monday to start the cleanup process, they discovered that all but four of the 21 homes on their street had been flooded. Razzell said it was several weeks before relief organizations reached the area with supplies.

"It's a humbling experience to have to run after a truck to try and get food," she said. "It's crazy."

The couple lived on their front porch for a month after the storm. When their children and Dobbs returned in October, they managed to procure the camper, a temporary solution that has given the family a renewed, if crowded, sense of stability. In addition to the family members, the camper is also home to their growing pet entourage: two snakes, two geckoes, a bird, two fish, and three dogs.

"Oh yeah," said Dezton, "there's the cricket farm, too."

Despite the family's losses, Tim said he realizes how lucky they have been.

"It's good that we've been able to stay on our property. I know there's a lot of people displaced still," he said. "But trying to deal with it mentally, it's so up and down, there's no way to explain it."

"It's been stressful but we're okay," said Riezen, who celebrated her 15th birthday Tuesday.

One bright spot for the Byrnes has been their children's enrollment in the North Carolina Virtual Academy (NCVA), a K-12 online public charter school that both Riezen and Dezton have attended since 2016. The online curriculum has allowed both Byrne children to keep up with their classwork and school schedule during their family's recent struggles. It has also provided them with an advantage over other local students who missed nearly a month of school following Hurricane Florence.

"My kids never missed a day. They took their computers to Maryland with them and they never fell behind," said Tim.

"You can stay at home and be around your family. I'm very lucky to be able to do this," said Riezen, who is currently taking 9th grade math, earth science, health and PE classes.

Riezen and Dezton said attending NCVA also allows them the freedom to work at their own pace and go on educational field trips to museums, like the USS North Carolina Battleship in Wilmington, and other locations. Riezen said she is currently a member of "virtual clubs" focused on sign language, travel, and photography with students from across the country.

Most importantly, the online classes have provided the children with both a distraction and an outlet while they cope with the hurricane's aftermath, said Razell.

"They've been able to keep busy, which has been nice, because it keeps their minds off of everything that is happening otherwise. It's a new normal, really."

"It helps take my mind off of it but as soon as the class is over it's like my brain just kind of fixates on it," said Riezen.

The Byrnes said they remain uncertain about their next steps. While the insurance money for the house has come through, the idea of starting over on a project that has already taken so much of their time and money leaves them both wary.

"I think I could remodel another house but not this one. I just don't think I have it in me," said Tim, who lost most of his carpentry tools to the flood as well.

"By the time we get an electrician in here and get it raised, that would be all our insurance money. So do we want to put all that money into this house again?" asked Razell. "It's a hard decision. It's hard to leave but is it going to flood again?"

The Byrnes said Hurricane Florence had provided them with hard lessons about the importance of perseverance, patience, and most of all, family.

"Hopefully this will help our kids realize what life is really all about," said Tim. "This hurricane is a horrible thing but boy will they learn something out of it. I mean there's five people living in this camper, so obviously we're doing something right."

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