Ernesto's damage

Ernesto's Damage

There are pictures at the URL.

http://tinyurl.com/e7lju

Finally off the Flooded Barrier Islands!

Posted by ncmike on 9/2/2006, 3:52 pm
User logged in as: ncmike

So Ernesto ended up dumping about 11 inches of rain on Corolla, NC, adding to the 5 inches of rain we received from severe storms the previous two nights. We ended up pretty much being trapped in our neighborhood for about 24 hours as the water in the roadway reached a peak height of 26 inches. We ended up with 6 inches of water in the first floor of our house ( a rental! ). The flooding from the rainfall all over the Northern Outer Banks was pretty bad. Getting off the island was a complete nightmare as Route 12 heading south from Corolla to the bridge crossing the Albemarle Sound had about 4 1/2 feet of water covering the road in Tuckahoe (Duck, NC) . Whalehead to the North on Route 12 was cut off with about 5 feet of water. The only trucks getting in or out were from locals in jacked up pickup trucks and SUVs. They pumped the water out of Tuckahoe with 3 pumps and it took 24 hours to clear the road. The traffic back up was about 5 miles long as there was no information passed to the visitors about the road blockage from flooding. My Dad and I found this while out doing a Recon check to see if we could get off the island on Friday afternoon. We ended up turning around and leaving at 6am today instead. We had to have the family passenger vehicle towed out with a flat bed truck to the main road. Our 4Runner and X5 were able to make it out of the neighborhood flood water with no problem after some receeding. The ride down Route 12 once out of the neighborhood was slow as many of the roads were down to 1/2 of 1 lane being shared by folks going North and South.

The Power to our first floor was turned off when the water started coming in which killed my internet link around 11am Friday. There are tons of folks still trapped all over the outer banks in neighborhoods that have low points where the rain water has gathered. All of this flooding was from the rain and not the surge, although some minor sound flooding did occur once the storm moved North over Maryland and the SE Winds kicked up. Since there are only a couple flat bed tow trucks in the Northern Outer Banks, it is going to take a while for many of them to get off. The funny thing was the Labor Day Vacation crowd was moving North on Route 12 in mass, totally not expecting the flooding and blocked access to the neighborhoods they were arriving to for vacation.

Here the lesson I learned from this storm. Rain in these tropical storms is really unbelievable. I have never seen it rain so hard over a 12 hour period. Next time I will recon and know the low points around any area I am located in and decide if I have an escape or not. Most likely I will get out early, even for just a tropical storm.

Here are the images from my journey with Ernesto. Baby, Mom and I are all home safe in Central, NC.

The Flooded Beach House we Rented - First Floor has 5 inches of standing water damaging a bathroom, gameroom, and bedroom.