Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_19 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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N GREEN hen Hurricane Fran slammed onto Topsail Island in September 1996, it destroyed the Medlin famil/s fishing pier, two restaurants and a motel. "It was the worst storm to hit the area since Hurricane Hazel," says Doug Medlin, the owner of the Fishing Village in Surf City. 'There was so much damage that we didn't rebuild the facilities." Instead, Medlin tore down the old one-story building where the Fishing Village now stands and built a two-story structure that houses a tackle shop, clothing stores, a surf shop and a real estate office. The toll of Fran's fury was high for many others along North Carolina's southern coast: More than $5 billion dollars in damage; miles of beach sand and dunes sucked from the shoreline; and emotional scars that will last a lifetime. After a 30-year reprieve from major hurricanes, the people of coastal and eastern North Carolina were given a first-hand lesson in hurricane dynamics. The Category 3 storm made landfall north of Bald Head Island on Sept. 5,1996, and continued its path on Sept. 6 — only a few weeks after Hurricane Bertha hit Pender and Onslow counties. Fran's course took it inland up the Cape Fear River, west of I-40 into the heart of the Triangle. "On Topsail Island, there were homes that floated away," says Pender County Sheriff Carson Smith, who was director of Pender County Emergency Management in 1996. "One house was sitting in the marsh between Topsail Beach and Hampstead." Although many homes and businesses were lost, the rebuilding began in the months after the storm. Now, almost 10 years after the storm, the coastal population has increased, as has the number of businesses. In Pender County, there are close to 20,000 more people on the island, according to Eddie King, current director of PenderCounty Emergency Management. "After Fran, we decided to have another shelter available during emergencies. This
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year, we are considering a fourth shelter." Many other changes have occured along the North Carolina coast since Fran, including a new beach insurance plan for coastal homeowners. What other lessons have researchers, government officials and residents learned from Fran? And how much have the beaches recovered? Beach dynamics are a complicated puzzle of interacting elements — winds, waves, currents, sand and geologic formations. The way these elements fit together determines how a beach responds during a hurricane, as well as how it recovers after a storm. Wind transports fine grains of dry sand above the wet beach. If these grains are halted by vegetation or other obstructions, they pile up to build dunes. Dunes art as reservoirs of sand that help to buffer nearby structures and landscape from the waves and surging waters during hurricanes and other major storms. "Unfortunately, a myth has evolved that sand dunes are a cure for all types of erosion," Spencer Rogers and David Nash explain in The Dune Book, a North Carolina Sea Grant publication. "In the real-world, sand dunes are very poor protection from long-term erosion, inlet changes and even seasonal fluctuations in the beach," the authors add. When it comes to storms, the more sand between you and the ocean, the better, says Rogers, North Carolina Sea Grant's coastal construction and erosion specialist. But for some beaches, sand was in short supply during the summer of 1996. Southern coastal beaches — including the towns ofTopsail Beach, Surf City, North Topsail Beach and Kure Beach — received a one-two punch with Bertha and Fran hitting close together. In July, Bertha had eaten away the berm and took a bite out of the dunes. Large quantities of Continued Coastwatch I Early Summer 2006 I www.ncseagrant.org

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