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walked light off it. Well, when site did, she went 

 out of sight. So I'm holding the boat, holding that 

 baby, and I reached down in tliat water as far as I 

 could with my other hand, and I felt her liair. She 

 had a headfull of hair. Solgota-hold of her hair 

 and pulled her back up, and "Ssspppppttttttttt!!! " 

 She blew that water out. Site was so glad some- 

 body got that hair that she didn 't know what to 

 do." — Kurt Barnes, water maintenance worker 

 in Rocky Mount. 



". . .people found out what flood damage 

 does to treasured memories and keepsakes. Wlien 

 you have wind damage, you may have a tree on 

 your house, maybe some water leaks in, and you 

 may ruin some slieetrock or a piece of furniture. 

 But whenyour home isflooded, you lose it all." 



— Richard Moore, secretary of the N.C. 

 Department of Crime Control and Public Safety 

 during Hurricane Floyd, and now North Carolina 

 state treasurer. 



"It was nice to have people who cared, but 

 who also had been through disasters enough to 

 help us understand that we were going to get 

 through this, too. .. .The National Guard, the Coast 

 Guard, and others from the military were really 

 the same way. They were lifting coffins out of the 

 water with great respect, and very sensitive to the 

 fact that someone loved tlie person in this coffin. I 

 think we all saw another side of the military that 

 was there. I'm very emotional about all of this." 



— Diane Lefiles, Edgecombe County Schools. 



"For us tfiere was no other story. And there 

 was no sense in acting like there was. It seemed 

 odd when we did try to get back to nornial. You 

 would be amazed how a young reporter whose 

 job is to cover City Hall rises to the occasion in 

 something like this. And I hesitate to use the word, 

 but there were little acts of heroism all through 

 the newsroom and all through the coverage. Folks 

 that just thought nothing of doing the best work 

 of their lives." — Bob Williams, Tlie News and 

 Observer, Raleigh. 



"And the thing that haunts me about this is 

 that if I hadn 'tfelt his arm, I wouldn 't have felt so 



bad about this. But 

 I felt his arm. And 

 when you feel 

 a guy's arm, 

 you feel like, 

 'Okay, I've 



got some control of this 

 situation. I can get this guy out.' They 

 do it on 'Baywatch 'and all these programs on 

 TV all the time. They just pull tlie guy out, do 

 CPR, and boom — we can pull this guy back to 

 life. And man, it 's just a liappy conclusion. But it's 

 not that way in reality. It' snot that way at all." 



— Ed Maness, North Carolina Highway Patrol. 



"When I got down there the cattle were moo- 

 ing, and the river was rising, and I sat there and 

 listened. The intensity of their mooing increased, 

 and by seven o 'clock in the morning, maybe, 

 they were all bawling. Just this chaotic bawling. 

 Tlien by about seven-ftfteen, they were all quiet. 

 And I knew then that the world was not at peace, 

 even though tlie river itself was very peaceful 



— Stan Riggs, East Carolina University geologist 

 and North Carolina Sea Grant researcher. 



• NORTH CAROLINA'S HURRICANE 

 HISTORY THIRD EDITION, by Jay Barnes. 

 2001. University of North Carolina Press, 

 Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288. 319pages. 

 Paperback, $19.95. ISBN 0-8078-4969-3. 



North Carolina has weathered a far-reaching 

 storm history, with hurricanes recorded since the 

 1 500s. Author Jay Barnes pieces together this hur- 

 ricane timeline through sometimes scattered and 

 sparse documentation, including personal stories, 

 pictures from the National Weather Service, news- 

 paper reports, historical publications and letters. 



Barnes begins by describing the "birth of a 

 hurricane" — giving a crash course in the science 

 of a hurricane storm. 



"Rivers of air in the atmosphere push and 

 steer tropical storms and hurricanes. Low-level 

 trade winds and high-altitude steering currents join 

 to guide the storms on what are sometimes erratic 

 courses," writes Barnes, who also is director of the 

 N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. 



Although today's advanced forecasts and 



warning systems provide 

 timely, accurate hurricane 

 information, there was once a 

 time when coastal residents relied 

 on the spoken lore of coming 

 storms. "Sailors and islanders 

 watched the skies for double moons, 

 sundogs, and the scarlet aura of a 

 summer sunrise," writes Barnes. 

 Repeated devastation and the deaths of 

 thousands of unwarned coastal residents lead to the 

 establishment of the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890. 

 Technological advances and flights by "hurricane 

 hunters" — the first aircraft reconnaissance flight 

 occurred in 1943 — brought steady improvements 

 in hurricane forecasting. 



Primed with bits of the history and science 

 behind the menacing storms, Barnes delivers 

 readers into the gripping realities of those hurricanes 

 unnamed but chronicled by year, as well as those 

 whose naming — Hazel ( 1 954), Hugo ( 1 989), 

 Fran ( 1 996), Floyd ( 1 999) — continues to ring 

 symbolically in the ears of their survivors. 



Barnes describes hurricanes dating back 

 to 1524 when Italian adventurer Giovanni da 

 Verrazano sailed along the North Carolina coast. 

 Readers also learn how the Carolina region 

 achieved the nickname "hurricane alley" after seven 

 hurricanes churned into North Carolina waters in the 

 mid-1950s, including the infamous Hazel. 



Arriving on Oct. 15, 1954, Hazel's eye swept 

 close to the North Carolina/South Carolina border 

 and passed north through Raleigh and into Virginia 

 — bringing record winds up to 140 mph. 



Marking the most recent addition to "The 

 Modem Era" of hurricanes, Barnes does not 

 overlook Floyd, the "ominous rainmaker" and 

 "monstrous flood producer. . .recognized as the 

 greatest disaster in North Carolina history." 



Barnes provides a lengthy summary of the 

 entire catastrophe that starts with the frantic concerns 

 of forecasters working around the clock and 

 continues month by month through the disaster, 

 the amazing rescue effort, the aftermath and the 

 struggle to rebuild entire communities. 



"How North Carolina rebuilds after Floyd 

 will have a profound influence on what happens in 

 the next great hurricane," writes Barnes. □ 



22 AUTUMN 2004 



