'Hard to comprehend' after possible tornado blasts Emerald Isle

By Sloane Heffernan, WRAL reporter

Emerald Isle, N.C. — A possible tornado, spun up out of the winds of Hurricane Dorian, damaged buildings Thursday morning in Emerald Isle.

“It shook a little bit, then it shook real hard and the right wall came tumbling down,” said Bill Knause, who had been enjoying his morning coffee right before the storm struck.

Knause said he had planned to evacuate Thursday to join his wife in Fuquay-Varina. Instead, he had to be pulled from his damaged home by EMTs.

“We’re lucky there weren’t more people in the park,” he said. No one was reported injured despite the widespread damage visible in images and video from the area of Islander and Reed drives.

Homes were blown apart in the Boardwalk RV Park.

Sonny Robinson was not inside his home when the winds blew. He returned to find it relocated down the street.

“It evidently went airborne. That’s the top of my home sitting in Bill’s living room,” he said. “It’s hard to comprehend all of this destruction.”

More than a dozen campers were knocked on their side, their metal skin mangled and twisted. Some were flipped upside-down, with their tires now aimed toward the sky. A blue beach chair was left dangling, suspended in the wires that held up a power line. Other power lines were downed across a parking lot, where trash was strewn everywhere.

Other tornados spun off by Dorian’s outer bands struck other areas along the coast. Tornado damage was also reported in Atlantic Beach, NC, and North Myrtle Beach, SC.

In Carolina Shores, the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office reported damage to a series of roofs.

By late morning, heavy rain was falling sideways, trees were bending and traffic lights were swaying as Emerald Isle hunkered down again. The city was ground zero in 1996’s Hurricane Fran, which was the last major hurricane to make landfall in North Carolina. Emerald Isle also weathered Hurricane Florence in 2018 and a half-dozen other hurricanes in between.