Thousand-year storms have wreaked havoc on Coastal Carolina far more often than the meteorologically misleading term suggests. Since Hurricane Floyd’s rains flooded the region in 1999, nine storms have matched the description of multi-hundred- or thousand-year events in coastal North and South Carolina.

On Sept. 16, Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight brought severe flooding to Carolina Beach and parts of Brunswick County. And then, on Sept. 27, Hurricane Helene savaged Western North Carolina with unheard-of flooding devastation that will spur months and years of full assessment, recovery and rebuilding.

Steve Pfaff, meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Wilmington office, explains that the thousand-year events are related to the probability that one will occur in any given year.

“We have great tools like Doppler radar, Skywarn storm spotters and dedicated scientists who voluntarily work in support of the National Weather Service,” he said. “And the reality is we go into these events with one arm tied behind our backs because of unpredictability.”

As for the higher frequency of these catastrophic storms, he emphasizes that the climate-change drivers have been evident for decades. “This change is staring us in the face; it’s having a dramatic impact on our ecosystems,” he said.

As of press time, millions of Florida residents were still reeling from the damage caused by Hurricane Milton, which made landfall near Sarasota on Oct. 10.

The human elements of coping with the preparation for a major storm and the tragic aftermath impact Pfaff’s outlook.

“It’s important to value new forecasting tools like FIMAN-T (North Carolina’s Flood Inundation and Mapping Alert Network for Transportation),” he said, “that gives us real-time flooding impacts for roads, bridges and other assets. It puts better quality data and metrics into our risk analysis and can save lives. We can use this web-based tool to better project rising river levels and identify evacuation areas.

“The truth is, I don’t like to do (post-storm) surveys at all. I may be in a home and realize that someone was killed by a tornado there five hours before. It’s also why we’re so focused on improving communication. Often, it’s less the accuracy of a forecast than reinforcing messages like ‘turn around; don’t drown.’”

As of Oct. 11, Hurricane Helene’s death toll stood at more than 230 people.
 

FLOODS AREN’T GOING AWAY

Some organizations are involved in trying to address flooding and its impacts before devastation occurs.

One such organization is the American Flood Coalition (AFC), a nonpartisan group of political, military, business and local leaders. The coalition advances solutions that support and protect flood-affected communities. The AFC has a Wilmington office directed by Tony McEwen, a former city executive.

“Being here in Wilmington and Southeastern North Carolina,” said McEwen, “we have the opportunity to see storms develop, and we’re used to experiencing a level of elevated risk.”

McEwen envisions the N.C. Flood Resiliency Blueprint as a true difference-maker that will, when stakeholders use it as a planning tool for their particular watersheds, help increase community resilience to North Carolina river basin flooding.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality developed the blueprint, which the state funded with a $20 million allocation to the department’s division of mitigation services. An additional $96 million will fund blueprint-identified priority projects in the Cape Fear, Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, White Oak and Lumber River basins.

McEwen is careful not to minimize the challenges faced by North and South Carolina but points out that “so many of our smaller cities and towns operate at the intersection of significant flood risk and low capacity. We want to take some of the pressure off of communities that don’t have the staff or related financial resources.

He cites the example of Fair Bluff, a Columbus County community about 70 miles west of Wilmington severely damaged by hurricanes Matthew and Floyd, among other storms.

“They don’t even have a full-time manager, though they do have a brilliant and dedicated guy who is shared amongst five communities,” McEwen said. “All of them have really high flood risks.”
 

SUPPORT FROM THE COAST

Wilmington area first responders, residents and organizations have been working to help those affected by Hurricane Helene’s devastation, which included whole towns washing away. As the severity and frequency of such storms continue to increase, so do the humanitarian needs during the aftermath.

The city of Wilmington, supported by multiple state and local organizations, recently announced a concert to raise funds for Western North Carolina. The event, scheduled for Oct. 29 at Greenfield Lake Amphitheater and headlined by Ben Folds Five, has been dubbed “From Wilmington, With Love.” City officials said 100% of the concert’s proceeds will benefit local charities that provide emergency food, housing and home repairs via the N.C. Disaster Relief Fund, managed by United Way of North Carolina.

In Western North Carolina, dealing with heightened food insecurity quickly became an essential piece of the overall Hurricane Helene recovery effort.

As a result, the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, along with dozens of other food banks regionally and nationally, ramped up their response. One example of why: Helene’s flood waters inundated Manna FoodBank, which serves Asheville and surrounding areas.

It’s not possible to overstate the damage to Asheville’s Manna facility, said Beth Gaglione, the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina’s Wilmington branch director.

“They had moved virtually everything up to the highest shelving possible. When the water rises to the ceiling, it’s going to get destroyed,” she said.

Gaglione understood the magnitude of what was in front of them and further that the degree of difficulty was irrelevant. They had to get it done. “So here in Wilmington,” she said, “we began producing individual, ready-to-go meals. The idea is that you can freeze them and then stack and palletize them. Our goal was to complete 10,000 of them by Friday. We finished them by Thursday. We had hundreds of volunteers come in all throughout the week.”
 

LESSONS LEARNED IN CAROLINA BEACH

Carolina Beach Mayor Lynn Barbee remembers arriving at the town’s emergency operations center at 9:30 the morning of the unnamed storm and thinking, “This thing is ramping up so fast to real danger. I just want us to get through this day without serious injuries or death. And right away, I felt this awesome respect for our first responders.”

“You couldn’t escape that they were rushing toward an unknown crisis and watching that play out in real time as their training and professionalism kicked in. It was just remarkable to see, including their water rescues, to get everyone out of harm’s way,” he said.

While the flooding in Carolina Beach wasn’t as disastrous as that of Hurricane Helene’s in Western North Carolina, it still came as a shock to the New Hanover County beach town’s residents and businesses. (Read about how one business is recovering here.)

One of the points of flood risk for a coastal, flat town like Carolina Beach, said Barbee, is storm drainage. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration created the Henniker Ditch, which runs through the center of Carolina Beach to the back side of Kure Beach and into the Cape Fear River.

“Now the width of the pipe is fairly narrow, but federal regulations prohibit a wider one, which would allow more water drainage and likely reduce flooding,” the mayor said. “I’m not talking down the importance of regulation, but I think we need to make adjustments like increasing pipe size or pumping capacity to make our communities safer.”

In that vital area of safety, Barbee also sees a strong need for more accessible communication. “We need to better communicate to the public when a storm is potentially dangerous. We have to refine our warning lexicon, our terminology so that people truly get the seriousness of these events,” he said.

Finally, as a concerned observer of cataclysmic storms, Barbee said he wants people to understand that severe weather events are not new, but their increased frequency and impact are.

“We have to acknowledge that we’re in a new climate change-driven phase,” he said. “It can’t be ignored.”