Editors note: Ryan is covering Florence for 1010 WINS digital. Look for his pictures and videos as he travels along the Carolina coast and inland communities. You'll find his daily blogs right here as he shares his experience of covering the storm.
BY RYAN JONES
The first three days my father and I spent here in North Carolina, we didn't have any rules to follow. We raced from Raleigh to Wilmington, back to Raleigh, back to Wilmington, over towards Wrightsville Beach, then Princeton, back to Raleigh...it was all chaos, meeting as many people as we could, hearing how they planned on dealing with the approaching black mass in the sky that was Hurricane Florence. The air was thick with anxiety all up and down the Carolina coast; people were facing the harsh truth that the day was upon them to deal with forces far bigger than themselves, or their communities, or even the capabilities of the human population, and we were determined to capture, understand, and report every angle of this story as it grew, swelled, in the days and hours leading up to Florence's deafening arrival.
After days of trying to get to Craven County, and countless detours along the way today, we've finally found our way to New Bern, one of the hardest hit towns in the entire region...@aljoneswins is behind the wheel and we're headed into town, more to come soon #Florence #1010WINS pic.twitter.com/LifRRIz0lu
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
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The snickering stopped, and people watched with wide eyes as the tragedies piled up. My father and I haven't been chasing Florence around; instead, we've been chasing the stories that came to the surface in her wake. Once we started exploring the flooded areas and trying to make our way to the coast, we finally found our first rule to follow when covering this story, a rule that holds up with no exceptions: The further east you go, the more costly the floods and the deeper the levels of devastation.
Sunday, was our last day for exploration, and we were determined to make it closer to one of the more impacted towns.
My father is a master navigator; I've seen the man plan entire cross-country trips with maps and notepads like somebody headed out to join the Gold Rush. He found a route chock full of state highways, detours around closed roads, and a splash of interstate maneuvering, and we set out without getting our hopes too high.
We hopped back on 70 and kept moving towards Kinston. I zoned out behind the wheel for a couple minutes, but then my dad was talking and pointing and I saw we were driving alongside the longest cavalry of utility trucks I'd ever seen. One dozen, two dozen, three...the line of identical white trucks must have stretched a mile, maybe more, yellow lights flashing like a thousand little fireflies beside us. We rode alongside them for a while, and before I knew it the big water tower loomed ahead of us, the one that read "Kinston." We were moving east, and nothing was going to stop us from getting to New Bern and reporting from the epicenter of Florence's epic blows to the region, the deepest wound sustained.
Before we got down to the historic district, we stopped for gas at an open Shell station on MLK Boulevard. This is where I met Suzie, the woman who I found filling up an old empty cat litter container from a faucet poking out from the back of the building. She told me she lives just outside of town, and that she's stuck crashing with her friend in nearby Havelock until she can get back to her house. Even then, she said, she's sure her house is flooded terribly.
Suzie Iives just outside of New Bern and is almost positive her house is destroyed...she's staying with a friend in Havelock. She's at the Shell station in New Bern filling up an empty cat litter jug with water...she says it's to help flush the toilets. #Florence #1010WINS pic.twitter.com/YoTA0XFLBb
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 17, 2018
But it wasn't until we reached historic downtown New Bern that the real desolation of the town presented itself. Upon arrival, even after a hurricane just left, it's hard not to notice that the downtown is quaint, gorgeous, a slice of Americana. After just a glance I had a vivid picture of what New Bern looked like just weeks ago.
The carnage wrought by the storm was real. The Neuse River is a great big beautiful beast that charges right by the downtown, and Florence's winds, and the subsequent storm surge took that water and heaped it upon the city with scorn. New Bern's got a couple of big harbors full of boats, and multiple vessels were lifted right up into the town; one landed on a parcel of grass by the scenic river walk, one down the street on the sidewalk, and one slammed right up alongside the Courtyard Mariott. Debris was everywhere, everything from trash cans to dead squirrels to big, thick chunks of wood splintered off from the docks were thrown all over the streets. The water that had rushed up onto land was so strong, so powerful, that it busted people's porches and doors, blew out windows and destroyed entire townhouses blocks away. A woman I spoke with owned one of them, and she sat on her front steps surrounded by the sopping wet remains of her worldly possessions. She was going to speak with me about her experience, but then the insurance company called and, well, that's a priority when you've just about lost it all.
Walking up and down the rustic streets of New Bern, I saw signs written on the plywood used to board up businesses and homes, just like the signs I'd seen in other towns. Messages like "#NEW BERN STRONG" and "BE SAFE FRIENDS" just looked sad surrounded by gutted buildings and torn-up storefronts. One person had a sense of humor about their misfortune: hanging from a window attached to one of the ruined townhouses was a handwritten sign, reading "TOWN HOUSE 4 SALE."
Painted plywood down on Craven Street in #NewBernNC ##1010WINS pic.twitter.com/XXURcCdoZ3
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
New York sent down some of its heroes to help out with the heavy lifting...here's Larry McAllister, the Rescue Manager with NY Task Force 1...he says sure, NC is different than NY, but his people are experienced professionals who can get the job done anywhere #Florence #1010WINS pic.twitter.com/cFieWBWOdg
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
I wish more of us were like Jefferey Harris #Florence #1010WINS pic.twitter.com/w9P5K2DeYT
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
He said the hotel employees had always fed the birds, and he took it upon himself to keep the practice going, especially after the birds had been through so much during the flood.
"It's there home, too," he said. Jefferey has been going around helping people since the storm began, making sure everyone's safe, clearing debris, and now he's focusing on helping Mark clean up the hotel.
Jefferey never considered getting out of town, or just looking for himself; nope, he's been up day and night trying to assist in any way possible in the town's recovery, and the recovery of each person who lives in it.
We drove out of New Bern like we'd just seen a whole lot of ghosts, and in a way, we had. The town, such a stunning town filled with rich history (George Washington had stayed there, and the streets are lined with plaques marking important events), has just had its soul sucked out of it by the horrible power of an overflowing river. I talked to one more person before we got out of the city, a woman who didn't want to give me her name. I asked her if the town was going to bounce back, and she scoffed at the question.
"This is New Bern...the people in New Bern love New Bern. So no, it won't be a problem getting back, simply because of the love for the town, and the unity of the people."
"This is New Bern...the people in New Bern love New Bern." #Florence #1010WINS pic.twitter.com/vxh5nh0h7o
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
It was a neighborhood, one with about a half-dozen houses in my line of vision. We stopped in the middle of the road, and the only option was to reverse out of there; the road ceased to exist ahead of us. There was nothing but water surrounding us. People's properties all blended together, and pavement and grass were all part of the same invisible floor underneath the seemingly endless lake of black water. This didn't just look like some flooded yards and basements, but instead like a lost city poking out of large, immeasurable oceans of water. A car sat ahead of us in the water with its door open, half-submerged. We left quickly, turning around and speeding back to level ground and civilization that still had a pulse. I was shaken by what I'd seen.
That neighborhood had once been a living, breathing place, one with human beings living in community, and now it was gone, flooded beyond any kind of hopes for rescue or restoration. The people who own those homes will have to start over, and that's incredible to imagine, the idea of starting over.
That is the takeaway from this, from my writings here on this website, from our expedition down to the coast of North Carolina. We come down here, we report on the hurricane and the floods that follow, we meet people, hear stories, and we attempt to put local faces on a news story, to remind people elsewhere in the country that communities aren't faceless. That the burdens are shouldered by individual people and together they lift the weight inching the boulder forward until the group grows larger than the oppression it suffocates under.
Downtown New Bern, North Carolina #Florence #1010WINS #NewBernStrong pic.twitter.com/KwXPqwQuzx
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones229) September 16, 2018
We've tried to tell their stories down here, and I hope we've done it with respect and dignity, but at a certain point, you can't tell the story anymore, because the main characters are about to start writing the next chapter themselves.
