Richard Fausset and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Though thousands of residents had evacuated the region at the urging of government officials, many others stayed behind, where they endured tornadoes, power outages, flooding and tree-toppling winds. In low-lying Charleston, the water was knee-high in some streets, though by late afternoon, Shannon F. Scaff, the director of emergency management, said that the city of 136,000 had largely avoided major catastrophe.

“We got hit more than we have in other storms, but anybody familiar with Charleston would probably agree that we got very fortunate yet again,” Scaff said.

Further north, where the Category 2 hurricane’s bands were just starting to be felt, there was lingering concern over winds that reached 105 mph, as well as a kind of war-weariness for a region still rebuilding from last year’s Hurricane Florence.

In the South Carolina coastal fishing village of McClellanville, the oysterman and bartender Pete Kornack had been taking Dorian seriously as it churned closer to him Thursday morning. But this time, unlike in other hurricanes, he decided to stay put.

“I’m not running anymore,” said Kornack, 52, whose mother-in-law is in her 80s and does not travel as well as she used to. It was tiresome, he said, to live constantly in the crosshairs. He had lived through so many storms he mixed up their names, saying “It’s like someone points a cannon at you, and says, ‘We might pull the trigger, we might push the button.’ It’s a bad feeling. It’s just trauma.”

In the Bahamas, where some neighborhoods were reduced to rubble, the trauma was even more acute, with 23 deaths confirmed and authorities fearing many more. The death count “could be staggering,” Duane Sands, the minister of health, said Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida declared Dorian a “close call” on Thursday, and the storm became a Carolina problem.

Hurricanes are the great, grim, incessant force of the coast of the Carolinas, a recurring source of heartbreak and death that have influenced the course of the region’s history. From 1851 until last year, 382 “tropical cyclone events” affected North Carolina alone — an average of 2.27 storms per year, according to the North Carolina Climate Office.

Before dawn Thursday, winds had downed numerous trees and powerlines, and by breakfast time the South Carolina Emergency Management Division reported that more than 199,000 customers were without power. Areas where tornadoes were reported included North Myrtle Beach and Little River, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina.

By early afternoon, Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina lifted evacuation orders for three counties along the state’s southern coast — Jasper, Beaufort and Colleton — but cautioned residents there that they might encounter power losses, downed lines and dangerous flooding upon their return.

McMaster said he was concerned about worse-than-expected rain and surge north of Charleston. As much as 4 feet of water flowed on Ocean Boulevard in North Myrtle Beach, he said. The Waccamaw River was expected to crest late on Friday and into Saturday morning.

“We’re still battening down the hatches,” McMaster said. “When the wind stops, we still have to deal with the water, because the water’s going to last longer.”

In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper warned that the arrival of Dorian would bring “sustained winds up to 100 miles an hour, the threat of tornadoes and a high risk of dangerous flash floods.”

While inland and river flooding were likely, Cooper said, “the worst of the storm’s effects will be on the coast until the storm clears the Outer Banks tomorrow.”

Many vacationers had already left Outer Banks communities, and locals were scrambling to pack up their belongings as the wind started to pick up Thursday afternoon.

Billy’s Seafood, a mom-and-pop store known for its fresh fish, soft-shell crabs and tuna salad, was closing up shop after moving its supplies several feet off the floor.

“We were just getting ready to leave,” Judy Beasley, who owns the store with her family, said when reached by telephone Thursday afternoon.

Hurricanes are deeply interwoven with the history of the Carolinas. Massive storms complicated the efforts to establish the first permanent English colony in the Americas at Roanoke Island, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, in the 1580s. The settlement was later abandoned for reasons that remain a mystery.

In South Carolina, the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 still lingers as a life-defining trauma for many coastal residents. At the time it was the costliest hurricane in the United States, costing roughly $7 billion in damage.

It was also a pivotal moment for the city of Charleston, knocking down or badly damaging numerous buildings. The damage was an opportunity for thoughtful urban revitalization spearheaded by then-mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., and sparked Charleston’s modern-day renaissance as a tourist-saturated coastal jewel.

Kornack, the oysterman, came to the Carolinas in 1994, but his wife’s family, whose roots in McClellanville date to the 19th century, carries the trauma of Hugo. On Thursday, they had their valuables off the first floor, the storm shutters closed, the windows boarded. He was worried that the storm’s western flank might arrive with the afternoon high tide, flooding everything.

“We’re right on the creek, and when the surge hits you, you won’t know it until the water starts rising,” he said. “It might go from no water to ‘The water’s at your front door.’”

The coastal Carolinas offer a number of challenges in the midst of a storm. Some of the barrier islands in the Outer Banks are difficult to access; this summer, officials in Dare County dredged a channel to ensure that an emergency ferry could pass between Rodanthe, on a sliver of barrier island, and the mainland town of Stumpy Point.

Bridges on and off coastal land masses can become dangerous to cross in high sustained winds, as they were in Charleston County on Thursday. And in the flat, low-lying city of Charleston, moving stormwater out of the city is dependent upon the tide cycle. At high tide, pipes and ditches are full of seawater, leaving stormwater with no place to go until the tide recedes.

In Wilmington, North Carolina, last year, Hurricane Florence washed out the highways that lead into the city, effectively turning it into a temporary island of 122,000 people, and the new storm approached as the city still appeared to be getting over Florence.

Blue tarps still cover many roofs, and contractors are in high demand. Some residents had tried to speed up work on their homes to get them ready for Dorian this week.

Steven Still, the county’s director of emergency management, twice referred to Dorian as Florence at a news conference earlier in the week, until a commissioner grabbed his arm and mouthed, “Dorian.”

“It still feels like we’re responding to Florence, even though this storm is different in many ways,” Still said in an interview Thursday.

But lessons had been learned, thanks in part to an internal county report that found gaps in the local government’s response to Florence. Before Dorian, faith-based groups and volunteer organizations knocked on doors in flood-prone areas to give residents a heads up.

At Codington Elementary School, 115 people had filled the shelter to capacity by Wednesday night. Inside, children played in the cafeteria and adults passed the time with games and chatter.

Katie Meekins, 72, and her husband had taken Hurricane Florence seriously, evacuating for 10 days. This time around, the couple stayed in their house, thinking the storm might veer east into the ocean.

But Thursday morning, they watched as a tornado emerged in their golf-course community of Porters Neck, and as trees fell on their house and that of a neighbor.

The couple had moved to greater Wilmington for a laid-back retirement, Meekins said, but during hurricane season it had proved to be anything but.

“We’ve been OK with this,” she added, indicting they were not sure how long they could keep it up. “But I’d assume that in another 10 years, we won’t.”

This article originally appeared in

Churning North, Hurricane Drubs Weary Carolinas

CHARLESTON, S.C. — After its deadly rampage across the Bahamas and brush of the Florida coast, Hurricane Dorian pounded the coastal Carolinas on Thursday, sowing fear and worry from the elegant streets of downtown Charleston to the jigsaw puzzle that is North Carolina’s barrier islands.

Farther north, where the Category 2 hurricane’s bands were just starting to be felt, there was lingering concern over winds that reached 105 mph, as well as a kind of war-weariness for a region still rebuilding from last year’s Hurricane Florence.

By early Thursday afternoon, the Category 2 storm was about 60miles from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, just off Cape Romain, as it continues its creep up the East Coast, according to the National Hurricane Center. And while the eye of the storm has so far remained offshore, the center’s models show it could possibly make landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Friday.

The center of a storm does not have to make landfall to cause serious damage and hurricane-strength winds pummeled parts of the South Carolina coast on Thursday. Forecasters said storm surge waters could flood up to 8 feet in some areas.

Dorian’s rain bands were whipping cities from Savannah, Georgia, to Wilmington, North Carolina, and places along the coast could receive as much as 15 inches of rain before the storm departs. Approximately 360,000 South Carolinians have been evacuated from their homes. The storm has already knocked out power for about 200,000 customers in South Carolina, as well as 9,000 in North Carolina and 7,000 in Georgia.

The wind began howling and groaning in Charleston around 2 a.m., bending trees to its will, downing power lines and toppling trees.

By daybreak, it felt as though the storm had fully arrived. Streets were flooding, and local TV forecasters, urging people to remain in their homes, warned that the worst of the storm would be felt in Charleston through at least noon. Charleston County government officials ordered residents to stay off high-span bridges, given sustained winds of more than 30 mph. City government posted a running online tally of flooded and impassible streets.

“Remember, TURN AROUND, DON’T DROWN,” the Charleston Police tweeted.

The water, however, did not get as high as authorities feared, Gov. Henry McMaster said early Thursday afternoon.

Charleston has accrued deep hurricane experience in recent years, as well as deep scars — particularly from Hurricane Hugo, which hit the city hard in September 1989. At the time, computer storm tracking was not as sophisticated as it is today and social media did not exist. Many residents were caught unprepared as the storm toppled buildings or blew them away.

Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people in South Carolina, and damaged or destroyed more than 21,000 homes statewide. According to author Brian Hicks, it also marked a turning point in Charleston history. With many older, less steady buildings damaged beyond repair, Joe Riley, the mayor at the time, saw an opportunity with so many patches of blank canvas to fill in and helped revitalize the city.

At least two tornadoes had touched down in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said Pat Dowling, the city’s public information officer.

One of the tornadoes was “pretty sizable,” he said, and though it damaged a couple of condominium buildings and a mobile home park near the Intracoastal Waterway, there were no injuries and everybody was safe.

The outer bands of Hurricane Dorian were also reaching north to Wilmington, North Carolina, slamming the area with heavy rain and winds — and causing at least one tornado.

Dorian’s center was far away, but its tropical-storm-force winds extended nearly 200 miles from its center, and its effects could be felt in Wilmington, a port city of about 122,000 on North Carolina’s southeastern coast. The National Weather Service’s local office warned that even if the eye avoids landfall, the city would experience winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane.

Thursday would be a day of “high risk for flash flooding in southeastern North Carolina, and we know too well that floodwaters can be deadly,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Cooper announced that an 85-year-old man in Columbus County had died after falling off a ladder while preparing for the storm.

Wilmington is under a storm surge warning through Sunday morning, and forecasters said water could rise between 4 and 7 feet in some areas. Many of the neighborhoods along Cape Fear River, which flows through the city toward Fayetteville, were expected to flood.

Officials in New Hanover County, which includes Wilmington, said a shelter at an elementary school had filled up but that two others still had room.

Wilmington is no stranger to hurricanes. Hurricane Florence dumped rain on the city and swelled its rivers in 2018, essentially cutting it off from the rest of the state. Residents lost electricity for several days.

And residents still recall the devastation from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which turned streets into rivers and took many residents by surprise.

Hurricane Dorian Hits Carolinas With Flooding, Strong Winds and Tornadoes

Hurricane Dorian was pounding much of the Carolina coast with heavy rain and strong winds Thursday, spawning small tornadoes and causing widespread power losses and flooding.

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Richard Fausset and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Articles written by the author

Churning North, Hurricane Drubs Weary Carolinas

Churning North, Hurricane Drubs Weary Carolinas

Hurricane Dorian Hits Carolinas With Flooding, Strong Winds and Tornadoes