A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 , 2019
BY PATRICIA SULLIVAN,
KIRK ROSS
AND REIS THEBAULTwrightsville beach, n.c. —
Jack Kilbourne, 53, was so unwor-
ried about Hurricane Dorian that
he didn’t board up the windows
on his home, which is surrounded
by trees here close to the barrier
islands that line the Atlantic
shoreline.
“Everything’s showing it going
east, going east, going east,” he
said, standing in the parking lot
of the Bridge Tender Marina,
where the eye of Hurricane Flor-
ence came ashore almost exactly
a year ago. “It’s going to be
something. We’ll have winds and
power outages and trees down.
We just won’t have a day and a
half of rain.”
That blasé approach lasted
about five minutes, until his wife,
Lori, walked down to the marina
with the family dog, Banner. Ulti-
mately, they decided that “it’s
probably more dangerous to get
up there with plywood right now
than not... besides, it gives you a
false sense of security inside the
house.”
Even though this area around
Wilmington woke up Thursday
morning to blaring emergency
tornado alerts — and even though
Hurricane Dorian in its prior
form, a Category 5 behemoth,
decimated the Bahamas just days
ago — many residents are having
a difficult time taking Dorian
seriously, even with the memo-
ries of Hurricane Matthew (2016)
and Hurricane Florence (2018)
still vivid.
Matthew blazed a similar path
to Dorian, causing billions of
dollars in damage in North Caro-
lina. Florence brought 20 to 30
inches of rainfall to already-satu-
rated grounds here, triggering
flooding, an overflow of the Cape
Fear River, evacuation missteps,
shelter failures and widespread
road closures that all but cut off
access to the outside world for
Wilmington and other cities for
more than a week. Residents who
evacuated could not get home for
as long as 14 days, costing them
huge hotel bills and worry about
family and friends left behind.
By contrast, authorities say
Dorian will be more of a tidal
surge event, with rainfall in the
10- to 15-inch range and a storm
surge of four to seven feet. Tropi-
cal-storm-force winds began bat-
tering the Wilmington area
Thursday morning and hurri-
cane-force winds are expected to
arrive overnight Friday, possibly
coinciding with high tide and
threatening low-lying areas along
the coast.
“This is not a Florence event,”
emphasized Steven Still, emer-
gency management director of
New Hanover County, where
Wilmington is located. “This
storm has speed.... We’re com-
ing out of a drought. We’re going
to have an impact, no doubt about
it. Trees will come down, power
lines down and structure dam-
age. But it’s not the same storm.”
Since Sept. 18, 2018, NorthCarolina has gone through a reas-
sessment of its hurricane prepa-
rations, with new evacuation
zones and shelter plans. New
Hanover County posted its after-
action report publicly, and Coun-
ty Manager Chris Coudriet said
Thursday that some of the most
important changes included get-
ting backup generators to shel-
ters and consolidating shelters
after one of them suffered a roof
collapse in the middle of Flor-
ence’s heavy rain and winds. The
county also is cooperating with
private organizations whose
members canvas vulnerable
neighborhoods to talk to resi-
dents about the need to evacuate
and relocate during storms.
Col. Rob Clark, commander of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’
North Carolina and southern Vir-
ginia region, said he is working
more closely with private owners
of dams, reservoirs, ferries and
ports in addition to addressing
federal and state structures. He
sent experts to Lumberton, N.C., a
town that historically floods, to
help put up temporary barriersand sandbags to mitigate flood-
ing, and his team has been work-
ing on beach renourishment, us-
ing natural barriers such as
dunes to keep natural disasters in
check.
“Some people think we’re just
putting sand on the beach,” he
said. “But it held up well during
last year’s storm, and it drastical-
ly mitigates storm surge damage.”
Damage from Florence is still
evident in New Bern, N.C., espe-
cially in low-lying neighborhoods
where many residents are still
living in recreational vehicles
next to their flooded homes. Flor-
ence delivered a devastating com-
bination of high storm surge and
heavy upstream rainfall to the
Neuse and Trent rivers, which
come together next to New Bern’s
historic downtown.
“One thing we’re keeping in
mind is that we still have a lot of
damaged structures from Flor-
ence. We still have a lot of tarps on
roofs,” said Stanley Kite, director
of emergency services for Craven
County, where New Bern is locat-
ed. “I really hate it for thoseindividuals because they’re defi-
nitely going to get hit again.”
North Carolina transportation
officials say they do not think the
same kind of widespread road
closures that stranded so many
last year will happen again. State
Transportation Secretary James
Trogdon said he expects a tempo-
rary bridge over flood-damaged
sections of U.S. 421 to remain
operational through the storm.
The Cape Fear River spilled its
banks and cut an 18-foot-deep
gash in the highway near the
Pender-New Hanover County
line. At the time, the road was the
main lifeline for Wilmington,
since sections of Interstates 40
and 95 were underwater. Both
I-40 and I-95 were inundated
during Florence, and flood dam-
age also closed sections of U.S. 70
and U.S. 64, the two main routes
into the central and northern
coast. The transportation system
in the state was so damaged that
interstate traffic was routed
around the state through Tennes-
see.
Trogdon said engineers are
working on a plan to raise the
interstates and protect them
from flooding.
State Emergency Management
Director Mike Sprayberry said
dozens of high-water vehicles
have been stationed near Wilm-
ington and that crews are ready
to surge into the area to avoid a
repeat of last year’s isolation of
the city.
The Carolinas have been under
threat for what has felt like an
eternity as Dorian first slid past
Puerto Rico, then crawled to a
stop over the Bahamas, unleash-
ing hell on its northern islands. It
then moved — at times at 1 mph —
toward the U.S. coastline, drag-
ging its high winds and heavy
rain from South Florida to Geor-
gia and now here.
Kinson Davis has been through
this before — and he was scared.
He woke up in his trailer near
Aynor, S.C., about 30 miles from
Myrtle Beach, to roaring wind
early Thursday morning.
“You could feel the wind tum-
bling,” he said.
Warnings flashed across his
television, dire-sounding alerts
about tornadoes and flash floods.
Davis was watching the news onhis knees, convinced the storm
could be upon him at any mo-
ment, and he said he was ready to
grab his mattress and pull it over
his head for protection.
He remembered 2016, when
Hurricane Matthew filled his car
with water. Miraculously, he said,
it dried out. He still drives it. But
he didn’t want to rely on miracles
this year. He fled.
From a Red Cross shelter at a
high school in nearby Conway,
Davis, a private security guard,
was glad he left.
“I see so many people who say,
‘I shoulda, I shoulda,’ ” said Davis,
who was still in his uniform. “But
if you wait until it’s upon you, it’ll
be a terrible disaster.... I didn’t
want to wait.”
Melissa Webber, 35, and her
4-year-old son, Gavin Connor,
opted for a shelter in Wilming-
ton’s Codington Elementary
School because they had just
moved to the city a month ago
and were staying in a camper
near the river.
“I didn’t think it would be safe,”
said the Fayetteville native, who
is a pediatric home health-care
nurse.
Grocery stores in Wilmington
still have pallets of water for sale
as well as groceries. Not all gas
stations are open, but many are.
The entire sense of the town,
residents and authorities agree, is
that people are simply less on
edge than last year. While old
hands shrug, the newer residents
have their own concerns.
“We just moved into this house
Saturday from Blowing Rock,”
said Laura McCantes, 66, as she
and her husband, Bob, 67, walked
their Westie, Hamish, early
Thursday between the bands of
rain. In 1989, they moved to
Sullivan’s Island, east of Charles-
ton, S.C., just as Hurricane Hugo
made landfall there.
“We went back to Blowing
Rock, and now we’re trying
again,” she said, wondering aloud
if perhaps the cyclones aren’t a
coincidence. “You don’t think it’s
us, do you?”
[email protected]
[email protected]Ross, a freelance journalist, reported
from New Bern, N.C., and Thebault
reported from Myrtle Beach, S.C.BY LORI ROZSAwest palm beach, fla. — As
rescue crews continue to look for
and evacuate people from the dev-
astated islands of Great Abaco and
Grand Bahama, relatives and
friends are trying desperately to
find loved ones in the Bahamas
amid the chaos of recovery after
Hurricane Dorian.
Access to the battered northern
islands, where the storm caused
catastrophic damage, has been
limited. Search and rescue teams,
including the U.S. Coast Guard
and the British Royal Navy, were
on the islands in the past two days
trying to find survivors.
Amid communication lapses
and widespread devastation,
though, news about individuals is
slow to arrive and difficult to find,
so thousands of people have taken
to social media to track down their
kin.
One site — DorianPeo-
pleSearch.com — started trying to
help on Sunday night, in the mid-
dle of the storm, when a Realtor in
Nassau said she saw a growing
need even while the hurricane was
still hitting the islands. Vanessa
Pritchard-Ansell said Facebook
groups of worried people had
grown so numerous and unwieldy
that it made finding names of
those missing difficult. A Google
Docs spreadsheet had grown to
40 pages and was difficult to navi-
gate, she said.
“Each of those Facebook pages
had a purpose, people asking for
information about their loved
ones,” Pritchard-Ansell said. “My
concern was that the purpose
would get lost.”
By Thursday, friends and family
members had posted the names of
nearly 6,500 people on Pritchard-
Ansell’s site. She said she is work-
ing with the U.S. and Canadian
embassies to cross-check names
with citizens of those countries.
She has an international team
of volunteers helping.
“I know this kind of thing has
been done before,” she said. “A guy
from Spain reached out to me, and
he had done something like this
for a different hurricane, so it all
came together.”
The Bahamian government cre-
ated a form that asks detailed
questions. DorianPeopleSearch is
stripped down and basic: the
name of the missing person, the
town where they were believed to
be before the storm, and their
status — known or, in the vast
majority of the 6,464 names, un-
known. The names are listed in
alphabetical order.
If there’s a critical need for evac-
uation, that is noted as well by
whoever is posting the name.
One woman was listed as “last
seen — Murphy Town by Change
Ministries Church — needs insu-
lin.”
“There have been people on di-
alysis; there was a woman in la-
bor,” Pritchard-Ansell said. “An-
other woman who had a 5-week-
old baby.”
Just a few missing people on the
website are in the “status: known”
category.
“When you see that somebody
has been found and their family
knows where they are, you feel a
moment of elation,” she said. “But
you also know that there are so
many thousands of others whohave not been accounted for.”
It might be small comfort to
frantic loved ones, but the number
of people reported missing in the
initial hours after a hurricane typi-
cally goes down dramatically in
the ensuing days, when power and
communications are restored and
people can use cellphones and the
Internet to reconnect. The Baha-
mian government has thus far list-
ed 23 recorded deaths as a result of
Hurricane Dorian, but they cau-
tion that the number probably will
rise as authorities reach decimat-
ed areas of the islands.
There are approximately
70,000 people who live on the
Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama
combined. It is unclear how many
were able to evacuate particularly
vulnerable areas, such as the
Mudd, a low-lying shantytown in
Marsh Harbour that authorities
said was decimated.
U.S. and British rescuers areassisting the Bahamian govern-
ment in searching for survivors,
many of whom will be brought to
safer spots on the southern is-
lands. Pritchard-Ansell is also
working with Trans Island Air-
ways to get names of people they
are evacuating.
TIA operations manager James
Ingraham said search and rescue
operations have been difficult be-
cause of the devastation — Free-
port’s airport was destroyed. Get-
ting information about where
people are — and if they are
stranded — is a challenge.
Pritchard-Ansell said her fam-
ily was safe in Nassau: “We barely
got a surface scratch here.” But she
said she knew even before Dorian
left the islands — and it took 48
hours for it to finally pass — there
would be a great need for informa-
tion about those in hard-hit areas.
She said a simple, easy-to-use
website seemed best, just listingnames and hometowns.
“On the islands, the degree of
separation is really quite small,”
she said. “Everyone knows every-
one or is a friend of a friend.”
Allaya Hagigal started helping
people connect as she was watch-
ing reports of the devastation
Monday from her home in Nassau.
“I got on Twitter, and someone I
follow said, ‘My family and I are in
my home, someone please help,
I’m unable to call emergency ser-
vices and the water is rising fast,’ ”
Hagigal, 20, said. “I was starting to
panic thinking about that, so my
mother was like, let’s find some-
one to help.”
Hagigal called emergency ser-
vices in Freeport, they took the
information, and the family was
rescued. Since then, she has made
more than 350 calls on behalf of
dozens of families to agencies such
as the Royal Bahamas Defense
Force and police departments inseveral towns, as well as the Na-
tional Emergency Management
Agency, passing on vital informa-
tion. They recognize her voice
when she calls, she said.
“The government is doing the
best they can, but civilians are
definitely needed. It’s such a huge
catastrophe, it has to be a com-
bined effort,” said Hagigal, a mod-
el and actress. “It’s been exhaust-
ing. I’m hearing everyone’s stories,
trying to quell their fears, submit-
ting countless names and address-
es, getting family photos. I’m try-
ing to do as much as I can. So many
people need help.”
Jeff Williams, 26, of Broward
County, Fla., has been looking for
news about his girlfriend, Deneze
Bootle, 20, for several days.
“I’ve been on Instagram, I tried
to join Facebook groups, but it’s
been so long since I’ve used it that I
forgot my password,” Williams
said. “I’m just looking up every
little database and Google Doc
and whatever I can find to get
news about her. I’m checking ev-
ery hour, and trying to call the
embassy. I haven’t heard a thing.”
Bootle is listed on DorianPeo-
pleSearch as being in Murphy
Town on Abaco, where her family
lives.
“I talked to her on Saturday. We
were talking about just regular
stuff, making each other laugh,”
Williams said. “She told me she
would charge her phone before
the hurricane. The next thing you
know, the hurricane hits and just
sits on top of the island. Then the
images started coming in, and I
started to cry.”
He said Bootle was home visit-
ing family. Williams said he
bought an engagement ring but
had not yet proposed.
“Deneze is my soul mate,” Wil-
liams said. “And now I don’t know
what to do. I just keep checking
and hoping that I’ll find her. And I
keep praying, and crying, and hop-
ing those tears will lead her back.”
Late Thursday, Williams got the
news he had prayed for: Bootle
was safe. In a text message, Wil-
liams said he hopes she can leave
soon: “Due to the conditions on
the island, no-one is truly safe
until they are off of it. So, I’ll
continue to pray for her evacua-
tion.”
[email protected]Rozsa is a freelance journalist based
in Florida.Storm-weary Carolinas brace for yet another big one
Thousands take to social media to find relatives, friends in the Bahamas
CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Allysan Knowles, center left, holds her daughter Wednesday as she listens to her nephew speak with loved ones after he was reunited with
them in Nassau. Amid communication lapses and widespread devastation, news about missing people is slow to arrive and tough to find.hurricane dorian
Coastal areas, some still
reeling from 2018, hope
Dorian passes them byELIJAH NOUVELAGE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Lightning flashes over the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, as seen from Carolina Beach, N.C., as
Hurricane Dorian neared from the south. Hurricanes Matthew and Florence pummeled coastal areas.