Hurricane Florence was the first major hurricane of 2018 and brought heavy rain and wind to the East Coast. Residents in North and South Carolina, as well as Virginia were among the hardest hit by the storm.
Florence caused widespread flooding in many areas, but for some former County natives living in those states, their resolve could not be dampened by the storm, even as they went without power for a number of days.
Sarah Noland, who was born and raised in Houlton, has lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, for the past 10 years and lived through a number of powerful storms including Hurricanes Charlie, Ophelia and Matthew.
Sarah Noland, a Houlton native who lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, shared images of tree damage caused by Hurricane Florence Sept. 15-16. (Courtesy of Sarah Noland)
The daughter of Bob and Angela Cowperthwaite of Houlton, Noland said Hurricane Florence was by far the worst one yet as Wilmington was one of the hardest hit areas.
“The storm hit in the early morning hours while we were asleep in our completely boarded up home,” Noland said Thursday. “The sound of the wind whipping outside is something I’ll never forget. It came in waves as the bands swept through. At times it sounded as if our home would be picked up and thrown.”
When the family awoke in the morning, Noland said the eye of the storm was over her neighborhood, so they exited their home to survey the damage and check on neighbors.
“There is a calm when you are in the eye,” she said. “But we were absolutely shocked when we looked out one of the two windows that were not boarded. Enormous oak trees were down all around us. Our neighborhood looked so different with trees uprooted and split in half throughout. Luckily the homes we saw were spared.”
The eye of the storm was brief, however, Noland said everyone quickly returned inside to ride out the bands of wind and rain that thrashed for a full day. Her home is 21 feet above sea level, so thankfully the family did not experience the flooding.
“Because Florence sat on our town for so long, we experienced winds for many, many hours,” she said. “Up the street from our home, it appears as if a tornado walked through yards and literally pushed trees over one by one. A few docks at the end our street were ripped apart. I’ve heard reports of a few homes that had their roofs ripped completely off. My husband works at the airport where winds were clocked at 105 mph.”
Noland said although she grew up in Houlton, where she experienced many powerful snow storms, riding out a hurricane was far more traumatic.
“Honestly, for me, Nor’Easters feel sort of peaceful until the ice weight/damage begins to knock out power,” she said. “Hurricanes are not peaceful. The wind is scary. The biggest fear is always a tree falling through your home and injuring people inside. Stuff is just stuff, but lives can be lost when trees are involved. Our town and especially our neighborhood is known for its gorgeous, hundreds of year old oak trees, and very large pine trees exist in our area as well. When you tuck in for the night you can only pray that everyone will be safe.”
Her family was without power for six days, as temperatures soared into the 90s, but thankfully she said they had been able to buy a gas-powered generator before the storm struck.
Jeannie Degenhardt, a Houlton native who graduated from Houlton High School in 1986, said the storm was not as severe as forecast, at least in her town of Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Her community only received winds up to 30 mph.
“For me, a lot of praying and faith helped indeed,” she said.
Florence, however, took a shot at the coastal home of Patrick Vail, a native of Houlton who now resides in New Bern, North Carolina.
Damage like this, caused by Hurricane Florence, was common in the Wilmington, North Carolina, neighborhood of Sarah and Jim Noland. (Courtesy of Sarah Noland)
“The storm was quite interesting as it really ramped up at night, so we couldn’t see much happening,” Vail said. “You could hear trees snapping, things hitting your house, hear windows whistling as air is passing by them at high rate of speed. The worst I personally saw were trees snapping in half and roof shingles flying off of people’s homes and flooding.”
He added this was his seventh or eighth go-around with hurricanes, which he likened to “good old-fashioned Nor’Easters.”
“In my time, a typical Nor’Easter is just a hurricane during winter for us here in North Carolina,” he said. “As for y’all, it is the same with a couple differences. Your storms produce huge amounts of snow, while we mainly get rain and when it’s over we dry out pretty quickly while you go through what’s called mud season. But pretty much you stay colder then we do down here. Our average temp is normally upper 30’s to upper 40’s during winter months; it just depends on weather patterns.”
Patrick and his wife Lisa were without power for only a couple of days, while some of his neighbors — and his parents — were without electricity for five days.
“For the most part, you can only sit and wait everything out until power is restored,” he said. “We used candles and flashlights so we could see at night. We also were under curfews, but I didn’t venture out ‘til it was over with.”
