As Dorian bears down on North Carolina, residents still face recovery from Florence

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Blue tarps hang over sections of schools in Jacksonville. Residents look to replace damaged roofs and many homes remain vacant. As residents in eastern North Carolina braced for a new hurricane, they were still recovering from the last.

In September 2018, Hurricane Florence lashed the southeastern part of the state, bringing 12-foot storm surges and relentless rainfall. Residents paused their Florence repair efforts as Hurricane Dorian approached, carrying more wind, more water and more recovery.

“In my home I still have repairs to do,” Glenn Hargett, assistant city manager in Jacksonville, said from an emergency operations center on Thursday, as Dorian swirled in the Atlantic. Hargett, 65, has lived in the state’s low-lying region his whole life and says he has never seen a storm inflict as much destruction as Florence. The hurricane inundated the first floor of his house with over a foot of water.

“We are just now trying to get walls that were more resilient to water,” he said. “That hasn’t been finished yet.”

In 1996, Hargett lived through hurricanes Fran and Bertha, which hit Jacksonville two months apart. People had little time to repair between the two storms.

As Dorian makes landfall, North Carolinians have had not quite a full 12 months to reinvest in their communities, which were left with more than $18 billion in damages statewide from Florence according to the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management.

In April, Congress agreed to provide $400 million to the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville to repair from Florence. The base is one of the top job-creators in the area, and Glenn fears it, like much of the region, will suffer in Dorian’s path.

Florence left Jacksonville-area schools with extensive water damage, torn roofs and ceiling tiles strewn across hallways.

“You can hardly go too far without seeing a school being fixed,” Hargett said.

According to Hargett, 1,200 Jacksonville residents are still displaced from last September.

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Carolina Beach, 70 miles south of Jacksonville, also faces Dorian amid a massive Florence rebuild.

“We have met with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) basically on a weekly basis to try to repair and replace damages from Florence,” said Ed Parvin, interim town manager of Carolina Beach. “Just last week, some of our citizens put up new roofs that had been ruined by last year’s hurricane.”

Parvin anticipated Dorian would bring more wind but less total water than its destructive predecessor. Perhaps the buildings at the greatest risk of Dorian’s power are the ones in the process of repair.

“These are most vulnerable because the structure is not complete,” he said. “When you have a situation with construction, you're going to have more damage.”

Buildings in Carolina Beach have already toppled from Dorian’s gusts, but Parvin said these were newly constructed structures, not ones previously damaged by Florence.

For some in this part of the state, Dorian may be the last straw.

“There are definitely people that had so much damage during Florence that I’ve heard them say if that happens again, we just can’t anymore homelessness,” Parvin said. “They will go somewhere that just doesn’t have these hurricanes.”

Where hurricanes strike, shortages of contractors can prolong the recovery process. Tucked between two rivers, New Bern has spent the past year slowly restoring its town to pre-disaster conditions.

“We’ve got 300 year old homes here,” said Mark Stephens, city manager for New Bern

He said Florence brought $100 million in damages to the city. He estimates 90% has been restored.

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How much of the progress will be undone by Dorian remains to be seen. The process of rebuilding just in time for the next hurricane may surely feel like Sisyphus endlessly pushing a boulder up a hill.

Yet while residents across southeast North Carolina have reason to be frustrated, Stephens sees resiliency.

“It definitely hurts,” he said, hours before the storm was expected to cross New Bern. “However, we’re a pretty strong community with a lot of strong-willed folks.”

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Hurricane Dorian enters as Hurricane Florence damage remains in NC