The damage from Hurricane Dorian is still there on Ocracoke. It’s improving, homes are being rebuilt, businesses reopening and slowly but surely, the village is recovering. “The Island is getting better all the time,” Ocracoke resident and owner of Ocean Atlantic Rentals Greg Honeycutt said. “I hate to use the word normal, but we’ll come […]
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A project the size of the “jug-handle” bridge north of Rodanthe is like some intricate dance routine carried out with mammoth custom-built gantry cranes, massive 155-foot pilings and teams of workers each with their own tasks. “The whole system is one big train. You only move as fast as your slowest part of the train,” […]
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Hurricane Irene made landfall near Cape Lookout Aug. 27, 2011. As the storm tracked across eastern North Carolina, the waters of Pamlico Sound first drained to the south and west, flooding the coastal mainland. When the winds shifted, a 6-foot-high wall of water crashed onto the dunes of Pea Island, flowing across the sand toward […]
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Federal and state money to help Ocracoke and Hatteras recover from Hurricane Dorian has been slow getting here, but one Outer Banks nonprofit has been moving far more quickly than any government agency to provide relief where it can. Jeff Byard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery, […]
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Marcy Brenner’s piano had seen a lot in 111 years, but never anything like the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on Ocracoke. The storm surge that Dorian drove into Ocracoke was like none that had been seen before. Wind, waves and storm combined to create an 8- to 9-foot mini-tsunami that pushed flood waters into the […]
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We’re waiting at the Wright Brothers Airport for our SouthWings pilot, Stu Bailey, who’s flying down from Norfolk, Virginia. SouthWings, based in Asheville with satellite offices in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Annapolis, Maryland, is a nonprofit organization that provides flights over environmentally sensitive areas. They don’t charge for their flights and the pilots volunteer their […]
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The black-capped petrel is somewhat of a mystery. A pelagic bird, it spends most of its time at sea, searching for food in warm waters. At one time it was one of the most common petrels in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic seaboard. But that was more than 100 years ago and the loss […]
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Pablo Hernandez may finally have a chance to sit back and realize how much he has accomplished. He’s the North Carolina Department of Transportation resident engineer for the Manteo office, which means he wears a lot of hats, but mostly it means he was the eyes, ears and supervisor for the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge […]
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Traffic is finally flowing across the replacement for the Bonner Bridge. There will be a ribbon cutting on April 2, and the official name will be the Marc Basnight Bridge. With a design life of 100 years, the bridge over Oregon Inlet by any standard is a remarkable construct of concrete and steel. Yet its […]
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Daniel Pullen’s Hatteras Island photographs are remarkable for their diversity: iconic images of the Hatteras Lighthouse or a fisherman on the beach early in the morning baiting his hook. There is a photo of a Jeep stuck on the beach, fantails of sand flying into the air as the driver struggles to free himself. There […]
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