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Outer Banks' Residents See Good and Varieties of Bad in a Storm

September 24, 2003
By ABBY GOODNOUGH






NAGS HEAD, N.C., Sept. 23 - Families who have passed this
vacation spot down through the generations expect certain
landmarks: Jennette's Pier, 64 years old and stretching 600
feet into the Atlantic; the Sea Foam Motel, all
teal-colored kitsch; and Crabtree Court, a cluster of
50's-era cottages hard by the beach.

All are gone now, or at least grievously damaged by the
30-foot waves that pounded communities up and down the
Outer Banks when Hurricane Isabel roared through on
Thursday. Entire strips of beachfront are devastated, and
though natives of these pinky-thin barrier islands insist
things will soon return to normal - another year, another
storm, they say - they also admit that this hurricane
altered their landscape far more than any other storm in
decades.

What it means for the economy of the Outer Banks, so
dependent on the tourist trade, and for its culture, so
proudly defiant of the elements that regularly batter it,
depends on whom you ask.

"A bit of a cleansing" is how Carolyn McCormick, director
of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, described the storm's
impact with a fierce smile. Her business is persuading
people to visit, and so her take on the hundreds of
millions of dollars in property and beach damage is that
Hurricane Isabel uncovered more of the natural resources
that visitors flock here to see. New dunes have been
formed, Ms. McCormick said, and a previously submerged
shipwreck is now off Coquina Beach.

"It is even more magical now," Ms. McCormick said as she
prepared to assess commercial damage in a meeting with
business owners. "We will come back stronger than we've
ever been."

Stronger, maybe, but also less appealing, other residents
say. With institutions like the Sea Foam and Jennette's
Pier in ruins, chances are good that developers will snap
up the properties and build big, flashy houses and hotels,
chipping away at the old-time, mom-and-pop feel of Nags
Head, Kitty Hawk and other oceanfront towns that suffered a
lot of damage. The Outer Banks, so geographically isolated
that they were long untouched by development, has seen a
lot of it over the last decade, as people from Virginia on
up the Atlantic coast discovered they could buy land here
for significantly less than land closer to home.

The damage wrought by Hurricane Isabel will only speed the
transformation from old-fashioned and out-of-the-way to
modern and crowded, some say. Permit agencies will forbid
the rebuilding of old structures on grounds that they are
dangerous, they say, making way for flashy new development.


"All these places are going to collect on insurance and
they're going to sell the land," said Shane Johnson, 26, a
plumber who was gazing at the remains of Jennette's Pier,
where he used to surf. "You'll see a bunch of houses with
10 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms go up, and you'll see this
place lose a little more of its soul."

In the continental United States, only Florida has a more
vulnerable stretch of coastline than the Outer Banks, a
chain of islands that extend 137 miles from just south of
the Chesapeake Bay to the South Carolina border. Wind and
wild weather are constants here, and residents accept sand
piled like snowdrifts on the roadways and house beams
tossed out to sea. They point to the Wright Brothers, who
took their first flight from Kitty Hawk, just north of Nags
Head, as the models for their own pluck.

"How in heck can someone live in San Francisco with
earthquakes or New York with terrorism and tell me I live
in a dangerous place?" said Mike Kelly, who owns four
restaurants here and said he has lost about $200,000 in
business since this hurricane.

Mr. Kelly said Outer Banks residents learned from each
storm, passing new zoning and building ordinances and
constructing stronger homes.

But will the tourists and developers keep coming now that
Hurricane Isabel has reminded them how vulnerable the Outer
Banks are? There has not, after all, been a storm this
brutal since at least 1962, or possibly 1933, old-timers
say. While today's wreckage could bring more resilient
buildings to the Banks, it could also keep such development
at bay, a possibility that appeals to some.

Mr. Johnson said Nags Head was not the tranquil place he
moved to eight years ago. Instead, it teems with
contractors and real estate types always looking for the
latest project or land deal. A Home Depot opened last year,
he said, and for the first time, a chain restaurant,
Outback Steakhouse.

"When something like this happens it makes people think
twice about their investments," Mr. Johnson said, staring
at the remains of Jennette's Pier. "Storms strip you down
to what's real - what's important and what's not."

An Outer Banks spot that has resisted development more than
most is Hatteras Village, 50 miles south of Nags Head at
the tip of the Hatteras National Seashore. It is even more
isolated now: the hurricane carved a new inlet through the
island, cutting the village off from the highway north for
the indefinite future. The damage was worst here, with at
least a dozen houses and several hotels destroyed.

Tim Midgett, a developer whose family has been in Hatteras
"as far back as we can trace," said the hurricane would not
stop "demand for the product." His family was in the
process of selling one of its hotels when the storm hit,
and though the hotel was seriously damaged, he said, the
buyer is still interested.

"We've had major catastrophes before," Mr. Midgett said,
"but every time we emerge better."

But in the most ravaged part of Hatteras, where hotels,
shops and homes look as though they were stomped on or
blown up and the air smelled of decay, not everyone was so
resolute. Jody Stowe, who was born there and saw her
jewelry shop, her home and her mother's home reduced to
soggy, stinky rubble, told Mr. Midgett something new to his
ears when he greeted her today. .

"I don't know if I'm going to stay here," Ms. Stowe
murmured, suggesting that like the coastline itself, the
people who know it best can in fact be broken by a storm.

835,000 Still Lack Power

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - From
North Carolina to Pennsylvania more than 835,000 homes and
businesses were still without power today, down from a peak
of more than 4 million, according to the major power
companies.

The biggest problems were in Virginia, where 211,000
customers were without power in the Richmond area and
259,000 more were dark in the Tidewater area, according to
the Dominion Virginia Power Company.

In Washington, 36,000 were still without power; in
Maryland, the figure was 214,000, including 30,000 in
Baltimore and 59,000 in Montgomery County.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/24/national/24STOR.html?ex=1065411832&ei=1&en=0b3\
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