Cleanup begins in NC beach towns after historic rainfall and flooding from no-name storm

Danny McLaughlin will have to make a new mark on the wall behind the door of his Fat Pelican bar in Carolina Beach to note the storm that left more than two feet of water inside on Monday.

It will go along with Fran, Floyd, Bertha and the others he’s had to clean up after in more than 30 years of business.

The funny thing is, this storm had no name. It didn’t qualify as a tropical storm and it was forecast to drop less than half a foot of rain across southeastern North Carolina, not the 18-plus inches that landed in some local rain gauges.

“No one knew it was going to be this bad,” McLaughlin said, pushing muddy water across the floor. “Nobody knew.”

Pleasure Island — the marketing name for the island where Carolina Beach and Kure Beach sit— along with the town of Southport, on the other side of the Cape Fear River, got the heaviest rainfall from the low-pressure system that never met the structural qualifications of a tropical storm.

It wasn’t clear by midday Tuesday how many structures were flooded, and the water was still draining off. Lake Park Boulevard remained underwater, flooded by Carolina Lake. The lake is normally the 11-acre center of a town park with a greenway around it.

“It was a mess yesterday,” said Larry Denning, dockmaster of the municipal marina in Carolina Beach. Some people had to be rescued by boat, and many were evacuated to town hall, along with their pets.

“We had dogs and cats and everything in town hall yesterday,” said Denning, who has lived here for seven years. “I’ve never really seen it as bad as it was.”

Though there were 50-mph wind gusts at the height of the storm, the worst damage came from the water, which rose quickly and engulfed cars and the ground floors of buildings in low-lying areas across the island.

But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been; current building codes require new structures to be built above flood level, and in recent years many of the island’s older homes in flood zones have been elevated to meet those standards.

Bryan Sartin’s business, Pleasure Island Rentals, which offers bikes, beach chairs and umbrellas, is housed in an older building on a concrete slab in downtown Carolina Beach. When the water comes up, it comes inside.

“It is what it is,” he said Tuesday, manning a push broom to shove he water back outside. “We’ll dry out and keep rolling.

“We live at the beach,” he said with a smile. “I’ll take it. It’s still better than living anywhere else.”

Beds, photo albums, grandmother’s cedar chest — all ruined

Down the road in Kure Beach, Shanda Rickert carried her belongings one armload at a time from a rented ground floor apartment onto the driveway to dry in the healing afternoon sun. She was visiting a friend out of state on Monday when neighbors started sending photos and videos of the water coming closer and closer to her door, then slipping inside.

Before it was over, everything touching the floor and up three feet was wet: books and bookcases, her sofa, her bed, her grandmother’s cedar chest and her childhood photo album that had been stored inside.

“It’s crazy when you see it happen on TV, but when it happens to you it’s a whole different feeling,” Rickert said.

Water still stood at the end of her street, an overflowing retention pond. Other neighbors were hauling belongings outside, too, and their homes hummed with the sound of industrial fans.

This story was originally published September 17, 2024 at 2:33 PM.

Martha Quillin

The News & Observer

Martha Quillin is a former journalist for The News & Observer.