Report: 3 North Carolina counties lead U.S. in hurricane impacts since 2010

Brunswick, Hyde and Dare counties each had 10 hurricane-based FEMA emergency declarations between 2010 and 2019

A new report quantifies what many North Carolina residents already know: They have faced a lot of hurricanes over the past decade — reinforced most recently by last week’s Hurricane Isaias.

The report is by the ValuePenguin financial advice website. It states that from 2010 through 2019, Brunswick County on the southern North Carolina coast and Dare and Hyde counties along the state’s northeast coast each had 10 hurricane-based Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emergencies.

Those three counties tied for first place nationally.

“With hurricane season coming, we just wanted to see over the past decade, from 2010 to 2019, which places and states that are usually affected by hurricanes have experienced the most disaster declarations by FEMA,” said Andrew Hurst, the author of the report. “And then coinciding with that, which of those places have either not so much flood coverage, or enough flood coverage that the majority of the population could feasibly withstand the damage that a hurricane would bring.”

Homeowner insurance doesn’t cover flood damage, Hurst said. Property owners need to buy flood insurance separately.

“I was trying to encourage people to maybe learn something that they might not know that they’d need, and maybe just ask people to reevaluate their individual situations” on whether to purchase flood insurance,” Hurst said.

‘We stick out’

The frequent hurricane findings don’t surprise officials in Brunswick and Dare counties, who said their experiences have led them to put in regulations and practices to handle the storms.

“We stick out in the Atlantic, and folks come to Cape Hatteras and we’ve been impacted by storms for many, many years,” said Dare County Emergency Management Director Drew Pearson.

Officials in Dare County don’t trust recently updated FEMA flood maps that reclassified parts of their community as less at-risk for flooding than before — meaning property owners would in those zones no longer have to purchase flood insurance, said county Planning Director Donna Creef.

“These are properties that we know have flooded in the past,” she said.

So the county and the six towns in Dare County all enacted new building codes for those zones, Creef said, that require people building homes to put the living areas at least 8 feet above the ground.

Dare County also has an active program to help people with existing homes elevate them, Pearson said.

And Dare County is also strongly encouraging people to purchase flood insurance even if it’s not required for their mortgages or they otherwise aren’t told to get it, Creef said.

Widespread damage

As Isaias approached, Dare County evacuated Hatteras Island. In Brunswick County, Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach also ordered non-residents to leave or stay out of town.

Prior to the storm’s arrival, the Brunswick County town leaders were criticized for that decision, said Brunswick County Commissioners’ Chairman Frank Williams.

“In hindsight, was probably a brilliant thing to do, if you look at it, because they don’t have people that got stuck here,” Williams said. “Whereas some of the other beaches have people that came down and checked in, and now their house that they were rented is uninhabitable and their car got flooded out.”

Isaias’ 5-foot storm surge, which hit at high tide and on a full moon late on Aug. 3, caused much damage in Brunswick County’s beach communities, said Emergency Services Director Edward Conrow.

On Oak Island, the ocean washed over and washed away miles of sand dunes that otherwise protect the properties, Conrow said, “so another storm this year potentially could be catastrophic.”

There also was damage in Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach, Bald Head Island and Southport, where numerous boats were ripped from their moorings and smashed onto land and into each other.

Flood insurance coverage

Dare and Hyde counties have the highest rate of flood insurance policies, Hurst said, with Dare at over 100%.

“There are more policies than there are homes, so people have a lot of their businesses insured,” he said.

The insurance rate in Brunswick County is 0.9%, Hurst said.

Williams, the county commissioner, said much of Brunswick County is miles from the beaches and sounds at its barrier islands, “so storm surge isn’t an issue for them.

“It’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ to talk about that percentage on a county-wide level of having flood insurance,” Williams said.

But the inland landscape is also largely flat, he added, so the county has regulations requiring stormwater infrastructure to help draw away the water that accumulates following heavy rains.

Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com and 910-261-4710.