Water Damage Restoration Near Me Powhatan, NC

NEWS

While thousands of people are leaving the shores of the Carolinas to seek safety inland, some coastal residents already away from home have been left stranded, without resources and with no way to get back to the coast.

One of those “hurricane refugees,” as she describes it, is Barbara Morris, 63, of Wilmington.

Not having evacuated, but having been left stranded by the storm, she considers herself a refugee, not an evacuee.

“Every single day it’s a matter of ‘What should I do?’” she said.

Morris made the trip to the Asheville area in late August for an event at the Diana Wortham Theatre, before the threats posed by Hurricane Florence had caused any alarm. She made plans for the maximum two weeks' stay at Lake Powhatan Recreation Area and Campground.

But by the time she was preparing to head back to Wilmington by way of a planned stop at Badin Lake Campground in Uwharrie National Forest, mandatory evacuation orders were in effect. Her two-week limit at Powhatan Campground had run out and she was left with nowhere to go.

She was stopped shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday by a gate barring inbound traffic to the campground, where she was hoping to grab a shower before it officially closed at noon.

The U.S. Forest Service has closed nearly 40 campgrounds across the state in advance of the hurricane, including Powhatan, Badin Lake and others nearby, like North Mills River Campground and Davidson River Campground.

Lisa Jennings, public information officer with USFS, said the number of reservations made for those campgrounds through recreation.gov wasn't immediately available Thursday, especially as the Forest Service continues to prepare for the storm. But in the Grandfather Ranger District, covering 192,000 acres between U.S. 321 in Caldwell County and the Buncombe County line with McDowell County, there were only four reservations for the coming weekend.

Getting folks out of the woods and keeping them safe is the No. 1 priority, she said.

Officials with USFS have been working closely with its meteorologists at the Southern Area Coordination Center, a large weather center that helps out with incidents like Hurricane Florence, and watching those forecasts closely, Jennings said.

Western North Carolina is expected to see six inches to a foot of rain through the weekend, with the chance for even more in certain areas. With already saturated soil, the Forest Service's top concern is flooding, she said, followed by the risk of falling trees.

When that amount of rain falls on soil that's already wet, any amount of wind has the potential to lead to a lot of downed trees, even ones that are seemingly healthy.

Living on the coast, Morris has seen the familiar mentality of residents wanting to stay and weather the storm. But Morris is no stranger to hurricanes, and knows “you don’t mess with these storms.”

In 2005, she was living in Louisiana and had to evacuate for Katrina. She was staying in Florida when Matthew and Irma hit. She was in Orlando in 1992 for Andrew, a storm she’s hoping to make a documentary about.

“You can’t plan when there’s a hurricane,” she said. “You can only board up and get the heck out.”

Being away from home when Florence first became a concern, she also hasn’t had the chance to secure or remove certain items from storage that she would have if she had been evacuating, and now she’s left with few options. The only thing she can afford is campgrounds.

Morris has spent the last few days sleeping in her white minivan in the parking lot of the former Toys R Us building on Brevard Road in South Asheville. For the time being, she’s secured permission to park her van for the night at Asheville Outlets.

Her bucket seats and rear bench seat have been removed from the back of the van, leaving her room for a sleeping bag behind the passenger’s seat and a row of paper bags filled with groceries and other essentials behind the driver’s seat.

Morris, like others she’s spoken with, can’t get back to the coast because of the hurricane and has been left to make last-minute plans. Some may have the means to venture further west to campgrounds in Tennessee that may still be open, but Morris isn’t among them.

She said she hopes the hurricane serves as a wake-up call to folks who may be quick to judge those less fortunate.

After an injury left her unable to work, her worker’s compensation claim was denied, and she’s left with just $939 in Social Security each month. Her next check is waiting in Wilmington, out of reach. So she’s left with the immediate plan of staying at Asheville Outlets on Brevard Road.

The Outlets received a few requests from individuals to stay in the parking lot and has only extended that permission to Morris so far during this storm, according to Manager Sharon Morgan, though they do routinely house staging utility companies that need to quickly respond to downed power lines or other needs.

Morgan said the Outlet’s parking facilities aren’t in high demand for people camping, as they don’t have utilities like water available.

Morris has run into others in similar situations, including some Wilmington residents with a summer home in Wisconsin who were towing their RV back home. Unable to continue east, they had turned around to try and find available campground space back in Tennessee.