Hurricane Florence could have been far worse

The wind howled through the bay doors of the Stoney Point Fire Department as Chief Freddy Johnson addressed his anxious firefighters about the dangers that lay ahead.

“This is big,” Johnson told about 20 men and one woman during a 7 a.m. briefing on Sept. 14, the Friday that Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington.

Many of the firefighters at this station near Hope Mills are ex-military. A few are aging veterans. Most are young volunteers who earn $3 to $5 per emergency call. All are adrenaline junkies who could not seem to wait to save people in pounding rain and hurricane-force winds.

“This is going to be bad,” Johnson said privately, over and over again.

When Florence was still far at sea, a giant Category 5 storm, national TV stations were reporting that the Fayetteville area could see 100-mph winds. For days, the National Weather Service predicted 15 to 20 inches of rain inland, with sustained winds of up to 50 mph and gusts up to 70. At one point, the forecast called for as much as 25 inches of rain in Fayetteville.

Johnson and his firefighters are well accustomed to hurricanes. A few of those firefighters were here for Fran in 1996, Bonnie in 1998 and Floyd in 1999. Nearly two years ago, it was Hurricane Matthew, which unexpectedly inundated neighborhoods all over southern Cumberland County, along with dozens of subdivisions in Fayetteville and downtown. And that was with 15 inches of rain.

Florence seemed different — worse. As it loomed offshore, it seemed bigger, meaner and wetter than any of the previous hurricanes. Forecasters called Hurricane Matthew a 500-year storm. What would Hurricane Florence be?

For much of North Carolina, Florence would indeed be worse than Matthew. The mammoth, slow-moving storm crippled the state from the Sandhills to the beaches, flooding towns, fields and highways on a scale not seen in generations, and turning entire counties into stranded islands.

Florence was supposed to have devastated Cumberland County, too. At one point, an emergency official said, the Cape Fear River was projected to crest above 70 feet — a record height that almost certainly would have spilled into downtown Fayetteville at least a mile from the river's banks.

The word “catastrophic” was used early and often.

But in the end, Florence was not catastrophic, at least not in Fayetteville. Somehow, as Florence swamped Robeson, Harnett, Bladen, Sampson and other rural surrounding counties, the city was largely spared.

Not that it wasn’t bad. At least three deaths in Cumberland County have been attributed to Hurricane Florence. Floodwaters seeped into hundreds of homes and businesses. Thousands of people went days without power; a few still don’t have it back. Nearly 1,500 people found themselves in shelters. An early assessment found 1,400 structures were damaged in Fayetteville alone, a number that is likely to grow. There is suffering and misery in pockets from Spring Lake to Cedar Creek.

But even with that amount of damage, Florence was not the monster people had feared. It was not Hurricane Matthew.

The National Weather Service says the conditions in Cumberland County and the timing of Florence kept it from being more destructive. Matthew dumped 15 inches of rain over already saturated ground in less than 24 hours. Florence dropped 15 to 20 inches on relatively dry land over four days. The dry weather in recent weeks may have saved Fayetteville.

Johnson agreed with the assessment from the National Weather Service, and he expanded on it.

“During Florence, we experienced rain followed by periods of no rain — giving our drainage system a chance to catch up,” he said.

Another big difference, Johnson said: Cumberland County was better prepared this time.

•••

Twelve hours after Freddy Johnson led the briefing at the Stoney Point Fire Department, his assistant chief, Kevin Murphy, gave the next update on that Friday night.

Murphy told his firefighters to be rested and ready. Hurricane Florence was about to get real.

“Bed down and get some sleep, the fun is just about to begin,” Murphy told the group.

But Friday night gave way to Saturday morning, and little had happened. The fire station received only one emergency call that night, a false alarm of carbon monoxide in a house.

Certainly, Murphy said at a 7 a.m. briefing on Saturday, Florence would make its presence felt soon. The hurricane had stalled for about a day at the coast, then made a slow jog south before creeping inland at about 3 mph.

That put Cumberland County on the right side of the storm’s center. The wrong side. The side that gets the most rain.

The worst was yet to come, Murphy thought.

The assistant fire chief seemed to be right. Rain picked up on Saturday and became ceaseless by Sunday. Around 3 p.m., Fayetteville police in downtown were blocking off South Cool Spring Street, which flooded during Matthew, and going door to door warning people to leave.

Blounts Creek overtopped its banks in downtown, sending water rushing over Campbell Avenue. Deep churning pools began to form on nearby streets that flooded during Matthew, damaging more than 90 Habitat for Humanity houses.

Cross Creek at Festival Park and behind the Systel Building transformed into a raging river that swallowed roughly 50 yards of real estate on either side of its banks. The Cape Fear River continued to swell, rising within a few feet from the bottom of a train trestle near Person Street.  An estimated 50,000 Fayetteville Public Works Commission customers had lost power. The wind tore strips of siding off houses and ripped limbs from trees.

It began to look for all the world like another Matthew.

•••

About 8 p.m. Sunday, City Manager Doug Hewett released an email through his spokesman, Nathan Walls.

“The major concerns of the Cape Fear River cresting at 62 feet, or above the Matthew-level of 58-feet, are that our downtown and properties east of the river would be flooded, to include businesses and residences,” Hewett wrote.

“It could definitely affect downtown businesses, in particular on the east side of the Market House, Person Street, Highway 301 and Grove Street, to name a few streets in the area. If that happens, then the City of Fayetteville, Cumberland County and other agencies who are responding to Florence will do their best to address every concern and recover as a community.”

Hewett’s email sounded ominous. Would most of downtown be under water? Even more ominous were the authorities going through Fayetteville neighborhoods in a mandatory evacuation zone asking people who refused to leave for their next-of-kin contacts.

But an odd thing happened Monday. The rain sputtered and then stopped. Blounts Creek climbed back into its banks, and Cross Creek began to recede. Homeowners who canoed out of their homes during Hurricane Matthew, including those on Delaware Drive off Robeson Street, could still see grass in their back yards. The Habitat neighborhood that seemed in imminent danger was still there.

To the north of Fayetteville, the Little River was a different story. It had covered more than a quarter-mile stretch of Bragg Boulevard in Spring Lake, leaving Guns Plus, the Starlite Motel and other businesses under several feet of water. Fort Bragg soldiers and Spring Lake firefighters escorted at least 15 people from the Heritage Apartments at Fort Bragg after floodwaters seeped into units that backed up to the Little River.

By Tuesday, more people at the complex had to be evacuated as the river claimed three more rows of apartments. Portions of roads from Spring Lake to U.S. 401 were under water. The river engulfed a family's compound at U.S. 401.

But the Cape Fear River, which flows at the bottom of a gorge, stayed largely in its banks. When it crested early Wednesday at 61.58 feet, most of the businesses that flooded were those near Person Street and Cedar Creek Road.

•••

The sun shone in Cumberland County on the morning of Oct. 9, 2016. It would have been a perfect day — no heat, wind or humidity — if not for all of the destruction the day before.

Hurricane Matthew transformed parts of the county into a zombie apocalypse, with people walking outside their damaged homes in a daze.

“My daughter passed away last year. All of her pictures. All of her stuff. Everything. Our whole life is in that house,” one woman said through tears as she pointed toward her home on Pennystone Drive.

The house, off Tom Starling Road, was nearly submerged after floodwaters from Rockfish Creek came rushing into the neighborhood. A cascade of dam failures upstream had sealed the fate for Pennystone Drive and dozens of other streets. Unlike with Hurricane Florence, victims of Matthew had almost no time to prepare.

Neighboring Chevy Chase Street and Tippit Trail fared no better. Neither did homes off Brooklyn Circle, Cameron Drive and other areas off U.S. 301. The Cotton Volunteer Fire Department near Hope Mills was under water.

House after house on Louise Circle in the Hollywood Heights neighborhood off Skibo Road flooded from Beaver Creek during Matthew. Dams failed throughout the county. Eleven lakes remain empty today.

Creek flooding was responsible for damage to 26 homes on Delaware Drive and hundreds more homes in and around the Old Wilmington Road neighborhood, including more than 90 Fayetteville Area Habitat for Humanity houses.

Matthew washed out dozens of roads, including a wide sinkhole on Gillespie Street near downtown. It left the Systel Building and a law firm next to Lafayette Park standing in several feet of water. Other downtown businesses were also damaged.

Twelve days after Matthew, a Fayetteville dump truck crept down Sessoms Street in Habitat Village, its giant tongs scooping up pile after pile of the few creature comforts people in the village had worked so hard to afford. Couches and TVs. Beds and dining room tables. All of it left molding on the curb.

Hundreds of people were displaced, many to live in motels, some for months upon months.

Nearly 15,000 Cumberland County victims of Hurricane Matthew applied for personal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Hundreds more still await reimbursement for the destruction the hurricane caused to their homes.

That level of destruction didn’t happen during Hurricane Florence.

There may be some couches and beds piled up along roadsides, especially in the area of Spring Lake, and lots of limbs.

But nothing like two years ago.

Nothing like Hurricane Matthew.

•••

City and county officials declined to be interviewed for this story. It’s not that they didn’t want to. They were just too busy. Gov. Roy Cooper was headed to Fayetteville on Thursday, and the Emergency Operations Center continued to be swamped with calls, another indication that, for many people, the storm was not over.

But it seems clear that city and county leaders are greatly relieved. Hurricane Florence could have been far worse.

It also seems clear that local governments, firefighters and rescue workers were better prepared for Florence than they were for Matthew.

After Matthew, the city used a Golden Leaf Foundation grant to clear debris from 11 creeks. It’s not known whether those efforts kept Blounts and other creeks from causing flooding, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Johnson, the Stoney Point fire chief, said the county learned many lessons from Matthew and used them for Florence.

A Cumberland County Schools activity bus sat in Stoney Point’s parking lot during the storm. Johnson said transporting rescued and stranded residents became a major issue during Hurricane Matthew. The buses, distributed to every volunteer fire department, would have solved the transportation problem.

During Matthew, FEMA swift-water rescue teams from other states didn’t arrive in Cumberland County until after the storm. Before Florence got here, Johnson said, multiple swift-water rescue teams, from as far away as California and Nebraska, were staged at several fire departments, including in Hope Mills and Stedman. Two command centers were established to coordinate water-rescue efforts.

Unlike during Matthew, Johnson said, the county held conference calls with all of the the fire departments and Cape Fear Valley Medical Center’s EMS to improve communications during emergencies.

Those improvements are thought to have helped the county’s fire and rescue workers to better respond to Hurricane Florence.

But the storm itself might deserve the most credit. Its slow approach was initially thought to be a harbinger of destruction. The slower it moved, the theory went, the more it would rain, and the more it would flood.

The pace of Florence may have proved to be a blessing in disguise, at least for much of Cumberland County. The city and the county issued mandatory evacuation orders for people living within a mile of the Cape Fear and Little rivers, giving them time to at least prepare.

For most of those people, the evacuation order proved to be an unnecessary precaution.

For the next hurricane, it could prove to be a much different story.

Had Hurricane Florence moved just 20 miles farther inland before jogging toward South Carolina, Johnson said, “our local impact would have been far more devastating.

“We were certainly blessed in terms of severity compared to overall storm damages in our neighboring counties.”

Staff writer Greg Barnes can be reached at gbarnes@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3525.