UPDATE: An Island Free Press Reader Survey: Hurricane Irene Response

In my blog last Tuesday, I asked our readers to let their voices be heard on Hurricane Irene from the preparation to the response by local and state agencies and other organizations.

And did you ever give us a shout out!

In fewer than three days online, at early afternoon Friday, we passed the 1,000-mark in responses.

This morning, just six days since posting, we had 1,312 responses.

Some of our readers have asked for an update on the responses, so here it is.

The 1,312 responses came from:

• Residents. 342 responses. Of those 226 stayed on the island during the storm, and 108 evacuated.  Eight did not answer the question of whether they stayed or evacuated.
• Non-resident property owners.  323 responses.
• Visitors.  590 responses.
• Fifty-seven of those who filled out the survey did not answer this question.

The chart at the end of this article breaks the responses down by villages where folks live, own homes, or prefer to visit.

In the response by village breakdown, a few things stand out.

• The highest response from residents has come from Buxton and Frisco.
• The highest response from non-resident property owners has come from those who own property in Rodanthe, Waves, and Salvo or Avon.
• The highest number of responses from visitors also came from those who identified with the tri-villages or Avon.

We have not looked beyond some of these very basic breakdowns yet, but we will. I can?t say exactly when we will begin to crunch the responses and mine the information, but we will wait until the responses to the survey begin to slow down.

That hasn?t happened yet. In fact, we did our breakdown on responses at mid-morning, and by 2:30 p.m. ? just four hours later — we had received another 25.

You can read the background and the details on the survey on my blog from last week, and you can read the comments we have received from our readers.

You can also keep up with the number of respondents by going to the Hurricane Irene Aftermath Page.  At the top, right under the link to the survey, we are updating the number of responses twice a day.

As promised, the results of the survey will be made public and will be available to anyone who wants to see them ? government bodies and agencies, businesses, rental management companies, or anyone else.

We hope it will give decision-makers useful information as we move forward.

Hurricane Irene has certainly presented more challenges, especially on re-entry, than any hurricane I have covered in the 20 years that I have been reporting on Hatteras and Ocracoke.

Hurricane Isabel in 2003 was a challenge, but the inlet that was cut in that storm isolated only one village ? Hatteras.

Irene has isolated all seven Hatteras villages and Ocracoke, whose economy depends on day-trippers from Hatteras and the northern beaches.

And this probably isn?t the last time we will deal with this kind of isolation.  It is perhaps only a trial run in the response to future storms ? hurricanes and northeasters ? that will continue to threaten Highway 12 until we have long-term solutions to the inlet-prone areas on the island.

So your input is important. And you still have time to respond to our survey.

Let us keep hearing from you!

CLICK HERE FOR THE ISLAND FREE PRESS SURVEY: HURRICANE IRENE RESPONSE.