Highway 12 reopened to all traffic on Wednesday evening, Dec. 19.
The road was damaged in Hurricane Sandy in late October and back-to-back northeasters in November and was closed for almost two months.
Several weeks into the closure, the North Carolina Department of Transportation opened a four-wheel-drive only bypass around the most serious damage at the S-curves in northern Rodanthe. However, that, too, was closed at most high tides until after Thanksgiving.
The only access for large trucks and two-wheel-drive vehicles was an emergency ferry between Rodanthe and Stumpy Point or by going from the mainland to Ocracoke and then taking a ferry to Hatteras.
So, Wednesday was a really important day for Hatteras and Ocracoke islanders. We got an early Christmas gift. We got our highway back.
Today, two days after the reopening, there were five inches of water on the highway at high tide, caused not by a northeaster but by heavy west winds behind a cold front that have brought big swells and pounding surf.
DOT had two options to replace the damaged four-tenths of a mile of highway.
Move it west or replace it where it had been.
Replacing it where it had been, of course, keeps it in the DOT right-of-way. Moving it west onto U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service land would bring with it a much more complicated process of permitting.
Pea Island refuge managers allowed DOT to use the area for a temporary four-wheel-drive route and never said they would not allow the road to be moved west. But even if they agreed, it would take time to make it happen.
DOT chose the most expedient solution ? replacing the road where it was. Place more huge sandbags between the highway and the ever encroaching ocean and then build a dune on top of the sandbags.
However, DOT said at the time that the beach was so badly eroded at the S-curves that ?emergency? beach nourishment would be needed in the area to keep the highway from being immediately overwashed ? and perhaps damaged — again.
Well, it took only two days for more ocean overwash at high tide. The ocean is just feet away from the newly repaved road.
Crews continue working on replacing the sandbags, a job that won?t be finished until sometime in January.
In today?s Island Free Press, reporter Catherine Kozak updates the ?emergency? nourishment project.
She reports that DOT and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working together to make nourishment happen, but nothing is in the works yet. No details have been announced.
We?re pleased to have our highway back, but driving though the area or just looking at the photographs is jolting when you see how close to the road the ocean is now.
We need the nourishment and we need it now ? as quickly as possible.
Let?s hope it happens sooner rather than later and that our unsettled weather pattern settles down and we are not belted by northeasters all winter.
Meanwhile, folks have posted comments on IFP and Facebook, thanking the working men and women who have battled an angry ocean for weeks and weeks to rebuild our highway.
The DOT workers and contractors are a tough bunch, led by DOT resident engineer Pablo Hernandez, who was at the work site all day, every day and will be for weeks to come.
We wish them a blessed Christmas with their families and friends.
And we hope Santa?s next gift will be beach nourishment at the S-curves.
CLEANING UP THE FRISCO DUMP
We also got an early Christmas gift from Dare County?s Public Work Department.
On Monday and Tuesday, Sanitation Department workers were at the huge and disgraceful dump site on the south side of Highway 12 not far from the Frisco firehouse.
By Tuesday, the huge and ever-growing pile of trash that was not storm debris had been cleaned up and the area was raked and neat.
Someone, maybe the volunteer firefighters, had place a small, hand-lettered ?No Dumping? sign where tons of trash had been accumulating since Dare County first announced its storm debris pickup.
The Sanitation Department had planned a debris pickup for right after Thanksgiving, when Highway 12 was expected to be reopened. However, when the opening of the road was delayed, so was the storm debris pickup, according to Public Works Director Edward Mann.
Space was just too limited, he said, on the emergency ferries to send all the trucks over to Hatteras and back with debris.
Mann said the debris would be picked up after Christmas when the road was expected to be open.
However, after complaints from citizens, postings on Facebook, and inquiries from Island Free Press, Mann went ahead and sent trucks and workers down here to Hatteras to clean up the Frisco dump ? the most offensive of the dumping sites that are not storm debris that have popped up in the villages.
Mann said this week that even as workers were cleaning up the site, people were stopping to ask if they could dump more trash there.
Those folks were directed to the Buxton Transfer Station, which is open and accepting all but vegetative debris. The first 500 pounds of trash is free for residential haulers.
We say ?humbug? to all of our neighbors who dumped their trash at the Frisco site and wish the very merriest of Christmases to the folks who cleaned up the unsightly mess before the holiday visitors arrive.
CLOSING UP: HATTERAS LOSES A LANDMARK
On Dec. 1, Cove Realty of Nags Head, manager of the Seaside Inn in Hatteras village, abruptly did not renew the contract of its innkeepers, who were new this year, closed the building, and put it up for sale for $1.25 million.
At the time, Cove said on its Facebook page that the inn was closing for the season and listed a toll-free number to call for reservations for next year.
Today, a reservationist who answered that toll-free number said that reservations are not being accepted ? that the inn was ?closed? and up for sale.
In an interview earlier this month, Roc Sansotta Sr., owner of Cove Realty, said the decision to not renew the innkeepers? contract and to put the historic building up for sale was strictly business.
He said that Chris Lattimer and Tracy Zimmerman, who arrived just a year ago as site managers at the inn, had done a ?terrific? job. Reservations increased, Sansotta said, but so did expenses ? to the point that he said he just couldn?t justify continuing to pour money into the business.
The owners of record of Seaside Inn are a California couple who bought it as an investment, Sansotta said. Cove Realty agreed to manage the property, he said, and agreed also to cover losses.
But the losses just continued to mount.
?I put everything I could into that place this year,? Sansotta said, noting that he is ?very upset? and ?very sad? about the whole situation.
Lattimer and Zimmerman are also upset about the situation. They said they received word on Dec. 1, the day after their year-long contract expired, that it would not be renewed.
They say they were ?blindsided? by the decision and are very disappointed. They are also out of a job and a place to live.
They moved to Hatteras from jobs in Virginia and a summer of working in Nags Head.
Lattimer said early this year that the couple would focus on upgrading the property and playing a more important role in the Hatteras community.
They did both of those things.
They invited villagers to visit the inn that had been part of their lives since it was built in 1928, the first hotel in Hatteras village and perhaps on the island. It was called the Atlantic View Hotel and was built to accommodate wealthy sportsmen who came to Hatteras to fish and to hunt.
It operated more or less continuously until Hurricane Isabel in 2003 damaged the building. It reopened in 2006 after being repaired, raised, and remodeled, but has struggled to bring in business.
Villagers felt more and estranged from the building they remembered so well, and it gradually faded from their lives.
Then came Lattimer and Zimmerman, who invited them to come back and invited community groups to meet there. They reached out to villagers, especially charter fishermen, and soon those charter captains began referring customers.
During the Day at the Docks in September, Seaside Inn was sort of a headquarters, hosting meetings and events during the four-day event.
So villagers who had welcomed the new innkeepers were also understandably upset when they were dismissed.
Many expressed their sadness on Facebook over the loss of the inn and innkeepers.
?It had become part of our lives again,? said Ernie Foster, captain of the Albatross Fleet.
Now it is apparently lost to them again unless a buyer comes along who has the financial backing to reopen it and make it work.
Sansotta said he would consider a lease with option to buy the inn, but that he just can?t keep throwing good money after bad.
The entire affair is just a tragedy all the way around.
It has not worked out for the owners or the management company. The new innkeepers are devastated after they put all they had into a community they had come to love. The villagers feel closed out once again.
The real loser here is Hatteras village, which stands to lose a historic landmark that is closely tied with its heritage and culture and which could be an important contributor to its economy.
There are no winners in this mess.
WISHING OUR READERS A BLESSED CHRISTMAS
We at the Island Free Press are grateful for another year of support from our readers and advertisers.
We wish you a peaceful and blessed Christmas with your family and friends and a new year that brings you happiness, prosperity, and good health.
We, too, will be taking much of the next week off to spend time with our family and friends.
We will be keeping an eye on the islands and will bring you any breaking news, especially news of weather and Highway 12.
We won?t be posting every day. But we do have a special year-end blog and slide show of 2012 in photos from Island Free Press that we will post next Friday.
Merry Christmas!
