My daughter, Lisa and I left Buxton at one o'clock in the afternoon, Oct. 17, 2003 to escape Isabel's wrath. We took refuge in Durham NC., arriving about 6 PM. We ate dinner and watched the TV's continous coverage of the storm's unwavering path toward Ocracoke Inlet for the next 36 hours. Friday morning the hotel pushed a copy of USA TODAY under our door. On the front page this photo of Billy Dillon, brother of my daughter's employer Kathy, trying to unblock a storm drain in front of his motel in Buxton.
BY JULIA LEDOUX, OUTER BANKS SENTINEL STAFF
On Hatteras Island, the Sea Gull motel was washed off its foundation. In the wake of unbelievable destruction left behind by Hurricane Isabel, Hatteras Island residents are expressing their resolve to dig out, clean up, and rebuild their lives.
(More photos of the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel's visit can be accessed here .
"Hatteras people have been surviving storms for decades," said Jeff Aiken, who rode out the storm with his wife Janet at their rental home in Hatteras Village rather than at their permanent home further up the island.
Hurricane Isabel tore a new inlet in Hatteras Island in a few hours; now state and federal officials have a $5 million plan to close the inlet in a matter of weeks.
But to do that, dredge operators will have to lay six miles of pipe under water and pump 400,000 cubic yards of sand into the breach, which is one-third of a mile wide....
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 24, 2003
Of all the recovery efforts since Hurricane Isabel ripped through Hatteras Village more than a month ago, closing the 1,700-foot-wide gash between the ocean and the sound is the one most anxiously anticipated.
It will take up to a million cubic yards of sand, pumped through 6 miles of pipeline from the state's biggest dredge at a rate of about 17 feet per second.
By Thursday, workers with Oak Bridge, Ill., contractor Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. had already filled the first section of the cut and were halfway done with the middle part. But the last section -- the deepest -- is really what people mean when they call the gap an inlet.
