North Carolina’s Tiny Ocracoke Island Being Evacuated As Hurricane Irene Gains Strength (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 24, 2011
Tropical Storm Irene has been upgraded to a hurricane, and she is on a collision course with tiny Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina.
Evacuations are underway, although a number of people have decided to “ride out the storm.” Do they not remember Katrina?
Reported by Washington Post, Ocracoke Island evacuations begin ahead of Hurricane Irene:
Visitors to 16-mile-long Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina have been evacuated ahead of Hurricane Irene. Residents will be asked to leave their homes Thursday morning ahead of the Category 3 storm, Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) said at a news conference. “It’s a standard precaution,” the governor said. “We want folks [in eastern North Carolina] to take this storm seriously and to get prepared.”
(Get updates on Hurricane Irene from the Capital Weather Gang.)
Wednesday’s evacuation served as a “test” to see whether people would leave when faced with the possibility of a hurricane, according to the Associated Press. The North Carolina Department of Transportation said in a tweet that ferries leaving the barrier island, part of the popular Outer Banks, are only half-full and traffic is moderate. They expect traffic to increase as the day goes on.
Ocracoke Island Evacuations | August 24, 2011
From Hampton Roads PilotOnline.com, Dare County official: Visitors, residents should get ready:
NAGS HEAD, N.C.
Dare County officials will meet today at 5 p.m. to discuss the possibility of ordering visitors and residents to leave before Hurricane Irene bears down on the area sometime Saturday. No evacuation orders are currently in place for Dare County, though Ocracoke Island in Hyde County began evacuating visitors today.
In the meantime, the county’s emergency management director addressed visitors and residents in a video posted to YouTube and hosted on the Dare County website. Sandy Sanderson advised people to begin preparing their properties and to make travel plans.
“Know where you’re going to go and how you’re going to get there,” Sanderson said in the video. “This is going to be a formidable storm. It may not make landfall, but it’s going to be close enough to cause some problems.”
He also advised residents that it could be a week to 10 days before officials let people back on the islands “if we do get a hit.”
Hatteras Island, which officials believe has a current population of about 25,000 people, is especially vulnerable, Sanderson said.
Officials estimate about 175,000 people are currently on the barrier islands from Corolla to Ocracoke, said Dare County spokeswoman Dorothy Toolan. The county is home to nearly 34,000 year-round residents.
From Forbes, Evacuations begin on tiny NC island ahead of Irene:
HATTERAS, N.C. — Tourists began evacuating from a tiny barrier island off North Carolina on Wednesday as Hurricane Irene strengthened to a major Category 3 storm over the Bahamas with the East Coast in its sights.
So far, things were going smoothly, said Tommy Hutcherson, owner of the Ocracoke Variety Store on Ocracoke Island. Cars had lined up at gas pumps to top off before leaving ahead of Irene, which had winds near 120 mph (193 kph) as of Wednesday afternoon. Irene is expected to get stronger over warm ocean waters and could become a Category 4 storm with winds of at least 131 mph (211 kph) by Thursday.
The evacuation was a test of whether people in the crosshairs of the first major hurricane along the East Coast in years would heed orders to get out of the way. As Irene churned in the Caribbean, tourists scurried from hotels in the Bahamian capital of Nassau to catch flights off the island before the airport’s expected afternoon closure. Officials as far north as Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the U.S. also were getting ready for Irene.
The first ferry to leave Ocracoke Island in North Carolina arrived just before 5:30 a.m. in nearby Hatteras with around a dozen cars on board.
The 16-mile-long barrier island is accessible only by boats that can carry no more than 50 cars at a time. It is home to about 800 year-round residents and a tourist population that swells into the thousands when vacationers rent rooms and cottages. Tourists were told to evacuate Wednesday. Island residents were told to get out on Thursday.
EuroNews: US Braces for Hurricane Irene
From NY Daily News, Hurricane Irene gains strength; targets North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island:
Hurricane Irene ramped up to a Category 3 storm Wednesday morning, with destructive 115 miles per hour winds heading straight for the East Coast.
The storm increased in ferocity as it passed over the Bahamas and meteorologists fear it could become stronger by the time it reaches U.S. mainland this weekend.
Evacuations began on the small tourist island of Ocracoke, part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, which is one of the first places expected to be hit when the storm reaches U.S. soil.
The 16-mile-long barrier island is home to about 800 permanent residents and thousands more flock there for vacation in the summer months.
It is only accessible by boat so getting people off the island in time could be a challenge, and it is the first real test to see if people are heeding official warnings to get out of the hurricane’s path.
This video is from two days ago, as Irene cut power to more than a million people in Puerto Rico. Trees were leveled and streets flooded.
Raw Video: Hurricane Irene Pounds Puerto Rico
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