Hurricane Irene's Effect on Carolinas & New England

[Mass Tim]

It turns out that most of the damage here in New England is West of I-95, and especially into Vermont.

I know that I-91 near Greenfield, MA is closed. Western Massachusetts is experiencing significant flooding and this is expected to continue for several days as the runoff - 10 inches of rain on average - gets into the streams and rivers.

I have not ventured around my area yet - we received about 5 inches of rain yesterday, giving me some basement cleanup work to do, but I have to say we were extremely lucky when I see what other areas of the state and country are dealing with now.

[Mark Sedenquist]

Tim and Foy,

Thanks for the reports.

Congrats to Tim on moving to your new house and glad to hear that you had little damage.

One thing to keep in mind, all of that flood water west of I-95 will be headed east and south!

Mark

[glc]

I don't know if we want to make this a separate thread, but for the foreseeable future, Outer Banks access is going to be quite limited. Hatteras Island is essentially cut off now due to NC-12 destruction in several areas - a new inlet was cut about 5 miles north of Rodanthe and that's not the only problem. The only access is going to be by ferry, and I'm assuming residents and supplies will take priority. The last time a new inlet was cut in that area, it took 2 months to fix it and it wasn't anywhere near as bad then.

Edit:

There are now 3 breaches in NC-12.

Here's a video of the major breach.

[Mass Tim]

Congrats to Tim on moving to your new house and glad to hear that you had little damage.

One thing to keep in mind, all of that flood water west of I-95 will be headed east and south!

Thanks - one of the reasons I'm glad I'm up on a fairly decent size hill - East of the Connecticut River! This morning I could hear the "nearby" river flowing - it's about five miles away - and it was a bit disconcerting. My prior location was about 1/4 mile from the river, and a low-lying area.

So far I have seen a report that the Shelburne Bridge of Flowers was topped with flood waters. Traffic for I-91 is routed onto US-5/MA-10 between exits 24 and 27. A section of US-5 in Easthampton is closed, so I'd imagine traffic will be slow in that area for a few days.

I've also seen reports that three historic covered bridges in Vermont were destroyed. Vermont is dealing with a lot of flooding and damage, with many towns inaccessible via traditional means.

[Foy]

I don't know if we want to make this a separate thread, but for the foreseeable future, Outer Banks access is going to be quite limited. Hatteras Island is essentially cut off now due to NC-12 destruction in several areas - a new inlet was cut about 5 miles north of Rodanthe and that's not the only problem. The only access is going to be by ferry, and I'm assuming residents and supplies will take priority. The last time a new inlet was cut in that area, it took 2 months to fix it and it wasn't anywhere near as bad then.

Edit:

There are now 3 breaches in NC-12.

Here's a video of the major breach.

As the links George posted clearly show, NC 12 between the Oregon Inlet bridge and the first town, Rodanthe, is heavily damaged. The closest comparison might be the inlet cut in between Frisco and Hatteras Village a short while back. I believe it took around 2 months to get that plugged up and the highway rebuilt. This one doesn't appear to have (yet) developed full tidal current flow in and out 4 times a day, and so it may not have scoured out to +15' in depth, as the inlet at Frisco did, but there is still much to be done to plug it up and make it passable again.

When the Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet was damaged and closed for a couple or three months in 1990 (or 1991?), the NCDOT built new ferry landings on each side of Oregon Inlet and while slow, we were able to get across for tourist-related activities like surf-fishing. Emergency supplies, vehicles, and personnel are at this time embarking from Stumpy Point, on the mainland astride US 264 some 25 miles west of Mann's Harbor, with connection to Hatteras Island at Rodanthe, below the new cuts. Whether or not the landing at Rodanthe is routinely accessible by ferry from the north side of Oregon Inlet is the big question. A navigable channel existed across Oregon Inlet in 1990 and I rather doubt such is available all the way down to Rodanthe. If it's not, and if some sort of repairs to NC 12 can't be completed very quickly, my guess is the ferry system will begin to take non-resident traffic in due course, so such travelers will have to jog west across Roanoke Island to Mann's Harbor, thence south to Stumpy Point. The big ferries accessing Ocracoke from both Cedar Island and Swan Quarter started today, August 30, albeit on a schedule limited to daylight hours only and for residents/property owners only. I rather suspect the Hyde County authorities will open Ocracoke to visitors at the earliest possible moment. Once that takes place, and once the Ocracoke-Hatteras Island short-hop ferry re-opens, travelers can access Hatteras Island from the normal, if long and involved, ferry routes from Cedar Island and Swan Quarter, NC. NC Ferry system info is available at www.ncdot.org/ferry/ and it appears there's a strong effort to maintain up-to-the-minute information for travelers.

Given that tourism is the primary industry down that way, we can rest assured all deliberate speed will be arranged and much communication as to status will be provided.

Foy

[glc]

I personally think they should leave the new inlets alone and build bridges. To expedite access, I could see getting the Seabees in there with their temporary bridging equipment.

[Foy]

The replacement for the Bonner Bridge, originally scheduled to be replaced within 30 years of its 1963 opening, has just received final design approval. A major sticking point was an alternate plan to move the bridge's path west by a short distance, then south on low pilings for another 12 miles to a point below the "bad and getting worse" places on the north side of Rodanthe. The alternate route would have cut directly through Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and through miles and miles of wetlands, so strong environmental objections were raised.

The geologist's perspective is to stop wasting time and money on bridges altogether. Barrier islands are temporary and trying to prevent them from moving with hardened structures on the ocean side and trying to deal with the natural process of sound-side flooding cutting open new inlets is foolish. There is a slight logic to connecting them to the mainland where the sound on the mainland side is narrow, such as is the case at Atlantic Beach, NC and many points south and west of there, but the business of building bridges across inlets, features which migrate materially, is fairly nutty, to be perfectly blunt about it.

As good as the Seabees are, and my "baby son" is one of them, they're stretched pretty thin with deployments right now. I don't see a mobilization of Reserves to build much of anything which the badly depressed private construction industry can provide. The active duty battalions are in a tight rotation of deployment overseas followed by high levels of training at home, then back overseas, so they're generally unavailable for domestic duty.

Foy

[Lifemagician]

... as to how Portsmouth fared?

Lifey

[glc]

I haven't seen any yet, but I'd assume that it's going to be difficult to get there for a while.

[Foy]

... as to how Portsmouth fared?

Lifey

Lifey,

I'd peruse the message board at www.portsmouthislandfishing.com for info on island access and links to post-Irene satellite photos, which should include the north/east end of the island where the village is located.

Portsmouth Island was close in on the northeast quadrant, and that's the worst place to be.

Foy