Coastal storm leaves North Carolina homeowner without all utilities after bridge collapse

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live on Sept. 17, as homeowners in southern North Carolina took stock of the damage left behind by a tropical rainstorm.

Transcript

00:00Folks in North Carolina are cleaning up after yesterday's rain.

00:03Meteorologist Tony Laubach joins us now to talk about some of the issues people are facing today. Tony?

00:12Yeah, Jeff. We're talking about all sorts of issues.

00:15And unfortunately for many of these folks that were dealing with the flooding yesterday,

00:18one of the biggest things, they have to really just wait until the water clears out

00:22so they can actually get a visual, take stock of what it is they need to tackle in the days, weeks, and even months ahead.

00:30We know many businesses yesterday had water run into them thanks to the flooding that we saw all along the coast,

00:36particularly there in Carolina Beach and Cure Beach.

00:39Those areas certainly going to be cleaning up.

00:41But a lot of rural areas still dealing with that.

00:44And for a couple of folks, it really was pretty obvious early on what it is they need to tackle.

00:49I want to show you some video here that we talked to the homeowners earlier today that, well, they have an issue to deal with.

00:57And that is their driveway has collapsed.

00:59And that is a very deep collapse.

01:01They actually had a bridge on their property that ran across from the access road to their place.

01:06That was completely washed out.

01:08Some of the good news that they have, though, is they have a back way they can take to get to and from their house.

01:13So they are not completely cut off.

01:15But you see some of this damage.

01:16Not only did it take out the driveway.

01:18It took out their utilities.

01:19They lost water.

01:20They lost Internet.

01:21They lost power.

01:22And they said they lost that all at the same time when that bridge ended up collapsing.

01:27But it wasn't until earlier this morning when they realized what had actually happened.

01:31But they said they were pretty clued in early on.

01:33Now, unfortunately, I was not able to actually get real sound from them because, as you can see, the distance between us was very, very great.

01:42So we were kind of communicating via the cans-on-a-string method across that chasm that he had.

01:47Fortunately, no injuries.

01:48He did not lose any of his vehicles in that.

01:50But, unfortunately, it is a bill that he is going to have to fit himself because that is not city property.

01:55If that had happened a little closer to the road, it might have been something he was able to work with.

01:59So this morning as I was talking to him, he was talking about some of the issues that he's going to have to be dealing with,

02:04not only in terms of the paying for it but the logistics of having to now put up a new bridge and a new gate

02:10where the old one once stood, and this all coming from the water that ran under the creek.

02:14He was telling me about Hurricane Florence.

02:16We've been talking a lot about Florence.

02:18It happened over six years ago.

02:20That left a lot of destruction in the wake.

02:22But he was talking about how even with Florence and the rain that they saw spread out over several days, Jeff,

02:27that he did not have the issues that he had from this one-day unnamed storm.

02:33Tony, you and I were talking about the contrast between a Florence, a 20 to 40-inch rain event over four days

02:38versus a 15 to 20-inch event over maybe 18 hours.

02:42And, again, it was way too much for about two or three counties here,

02:46areas around especially the area of Brunswick County there in far southern North Carolina,

02:53right over the Wilmington area as well.

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