The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, NC

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September 16, 2009

Disaster brought out best in people

T. J. ROYAL

For Edgecombe County officials, Hurricane Floyd left a legacy the area still deals with today, but they said it also brought out much of the best in people who helped in the recovery effort.

Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners Vice Chairman Charlie Harrell, Extension Director Art Bradley and Emergency Services Director Butch Beach each had a significant hand in the county's operations when the flood waters came and after they receded.

Harrell, who was the board's chairman at the time, said he remembers Thursday, Sept. 16, 1999, as a day with "beautiful" weather, where he and other officials were able to survey the seemingly minor damage in the area.

"I kind of thought we had dodged a bullet" because of how calm the weather was, Harrell said, remembering that he drove around Princeville that 10 years ago today to check on the damage.

But then the flooding started late the following day, with "little pre-warning about a flood event of that magnitude" that would engulf part of Tarboro and virtually all of Princeville, he added.

After signing the county's declaration of emergency, and bringing together the Board of Commissioners for emergency meetings at the county Detention Center, Harrell said he was able to survey the damage later when he went up for a couple of helicopter rides.

While his home did not receive any damage, he said that following the flood, "the biggest problem for a lot of folks was a loss of water" for weeks at a time.

And for the county officials, the logistics of getting people relocated to shelters, such as the temporary trailer park near the Fountain Correctional Center for Women, was a "huge undertaking" once the waters receded, Harrell added.

With the waters causing so much crop damage, Bradley, who was an Extension agent then, all of their office space on the first floor of the County Administration Building, was flooded, with only a concession trailer worth of belongings that was salvageable.

In the months that followed, he said he helped farmers "certify their crop losses" and also had to help them sort out their paperwork from the Tobacco Master Settlement that was set to take place in 2000.

Thinking back on a decade since the flood occurred, the Extension director was surprised that so much time has passed.

"It doesn't seem like anywhere near that long," Bradley said.

While working as a customer representative for Edgecombe-Martin County Electric membership Corp., Beach said that when Floyd hit, the cooperative had permission to use the fire station in Oak City as a base of operations, to restore power in the area. Their main offices, outside of Princeville on N.C. 33, were flooded.

And because flood waters prevented travel on U.S. 64, in order to bring electric materials from Raleigh to Edgecombe County, Beach said EMC crews had to go to the "edge of Suffolk, Va.," and come down N.C. 11 to reach Oak City.

"Even N.C. 11 was covered in trees" when they made their way to the area on the road, and that they were fortunate to make it to the area on that roadway, Beach said. When they arrived with their "rolls and rolls and rolls of wire" to work with, in order to restore power in spots, he said his crew occasionally had to improvise with their surroundings.

Once the flood waters receded near the EMC offices, Beach said his crew restored power to 50 families in that area by cutting the limbs off of one tree, and "running the wires and letting the tree be the tent pole." That, he added, was only a temporary solution.

But once Beach left EMC to work for the county as a building inspector early in 2000, his extended hours checking safety standards on building lasted "for months."

Working seven days a week, often in 12-hour shifts, Beach said that when it came to helping builders in the recovery effort, the planning department was willing and able to work that long "if that's what it took to keep those folks rolling."

Though the flood caused millions of dollars in damage and claimed seven lives in Edgecombe, Beach added that he thought it also was "a good lesson in how good people can be to other people."

He recalled the volunteers who came from outside the community to help in the months following the flood. He said he also remembered very well how "just about every church group you can think of was involved" in the clean-up efforts.

Harrell added that during the flood itself, the "tremendous help of neighbor helping neighbor (was) what really limited the loss of life" within Edgecombe.

The commissioner also said that FEMA and the state "carried the largest part of the load financially, with the resources brought in" to assist in the county's recovery.

Even with the work that was poured into the recovery after Floyd, Harrell said that for him, the loss of population "that never came back" has been a big obstacle for Edgecombe County to overcome.

"A lot of times, I think of it in terms of before the flood and after the flood," how the county's history has been shaped by Floyd, Harrell added.

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