THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412250083
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
The meteorologists had it half right.
The Christmas Eve Storm, a huge northeaster that could easily end up being the most powerful coastal storm this winter, slammed ashore Saturday with hurricane force.
It just did it in New England, not in Virginia and North Carolina, as originally predicted.
In the mid-Atlantic region, a much weaker cousin of the big storm stirred up a lot of surf, causing moderate flooding and beach erosion as winds blew in at a steady 35 to 45 mph with some higher gusts.
On the Outer Banks, ocean overwash left N.C. Route 12 flooded and strewn with mud and debris. The road has been closed until Monday, leaving Hatteras Island's 5,000 permanent residents cut off from the mainland. And in Kitty Hawk, several homes along the highway were flooded, although none was lost.
Up the coast in the Sandbridge section of Virginia Beach, one oceanfront home damaged during Hurricane Gordon's brush with the region last month succumbed to the surf Saturday afternoon.
The house - dubbed the Sea and Sky - collapsed into the ocean at midafternoon, leaving furnishings and debris bobbing in the surf. A refrigerator washed up on the beach a few hundred yards away.
Dozens of spectators had gathered near the condemened home, expecting it to go.
``This is really sad. It's like a circus,'' said Hannah Howard, a theater student at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
The second floor sagged and tilted toward the water. Then it split in the middle, where the rear wall of the first floor had supported the second floor. Within seconds, the whole house was left cracked and crushed.
``I'm really not surprised,'' said the owner, Robert W. Winstead, when reached at his home in Richmond on Saturday afternoon. ``I had received a notice from the city saying that it was condemned and had to be destroyed. That it was unsafe; structurally unsound and in imminent (danger of) collapse. They were right.''
The home was one of several that had lost its protective bulkhead to the November high tides. Without it, waves had crashed in, eating away sand from under and around the house.
Winstead had come down to the house, in the 3500 block of Sandfiddler Road, last week.
``I'd planned to pick up my furniture,'' he said. But while he was inside, the relentless surf that had been picking away at what was left of the yard suddenly gobbled up a large chunk of sand and left him stranded in the building.
``My carport fell in,'' Winstead said. ``It left a canyon . . . an 8- to 9-foot gap.'' Neighbors brought a ladder and extended it across the chasm so Winstead could get out.
``The building was really unsafe,'' he said. ``I really shouldn't have been in it.'' But he had hoped to salvage some of his belongings, gathered over the 18 years he had owned the home. Instead, most were lost. ``But I did get most of my personal things out. I hadn't left many of them there.''
Neighbors were helpless to do anything Saturday as the house collapsed.
``We were standing at our window, watching,'' said Rachel Zeek, 19, who lives across the street from the Winstead house. ``It sounded like an an earthquake. We could see the furniture falling out of the back end of the house.''
She said the house had been sagging for several days as the grounds around it vanished. But the swift collapse caught her off guard. ``I didn't expect it to go in as fast as it did. It was all of a sudden . . . and it was real loud.''
Zeek said she fears this may be the first of many homes to be lost, especially if this winter brings a lot of coastal storms.
``We've been living down here since they put in the first bulkheads, and we've always known this was going to happen,'' she said. ``It's the city's fault for not doing something about it a long time ago.''
She said the city's plans for sand replenishment are not good enough if work won't begin for two years, as presently anticipated.
``It's just ridiculous,'' Zeek said. ``Nobody wants to do anything about it. They just say, `Well, that's a shame,' and just shrug it right off.''
Two other houses nearby appeared to be OK, despite beach erosion, said Sandbridge resident Thomas E. Fraim, chairman of the city's erosion commission. He surveyed Sandbridge Saturday afternoon.
``Other than what you would normally see associated with any northeaster, I don't think there is any more damage,'' Fraim said.
``There's a couple more bulkheads that flattened out, but that's a natural process'' for the bulkheads that were already damaged by last month's brush with Hurricane Gordon.
``Now, we'll get ready for the next one,'' Fraim said. ``We just keep weaving and bobbing.''
More beach was eaten away at Sandbridge on Friday and Saturday, especially in areas where bulkheads have been breached.
On the Outer Banks, meanwhile, no homes were lost to the storm, but many residents will spend Christmas drying out their belongings.
In Kitty Hawk, where residents said high tides over the past few days were worse than those that toppled four houses during Hurricane Gordon last month, about 20 homes flooded Saturday.
``I'm sick of this. We haven't even gotten into nor'easter season yet, and I've been flooded three times this winter already,'' said Jim Filipowicz, 36, who watched as waves crashed against his front door as high as the doorknob.
``I got scared to death, the water was coming through here so fast,'' Filipowicz said. ``Those waves were just hitting the dunes and exploding. They came through my house and lifted the commode right off the downstairs bathroom wall. The water pipe was just hanging there, spouting to the ceiling.''
Filipowicz, his wife, and two preschool children live on the west side of N.C. Route 12, across the street from the ``Drift Away'' cottage - which almost tumbled during Hurricane Gordon's high tides.
On Saturday afternoon, the ocean was 4 feet deep in Filipowicz's back yard. Across the street, three seaside cottages swayed as waves leapt between boards in their decks - even though the decks stood atop 10-foot-tall pilings.
Chunks of concrete, blacktop and other debris littered the sand that filled the two-lane road. Electric wires dangled from power poles. Spectators used overturned septic tanks as stepping stones to keep out of the swiftly swirling overwash.
``I've still got power and cable TV. Can you believe that?'' Filipowicz asked. ``And we brought all the kids' Christmas presents up from downstairs - put them in the attic instead - when we heard this storm was coming. We hadn't even finished cleaning up from Hurricane Gordon yet.
``This storm was pretty bad around here,'' Filipowicz said, leaping over a wave that suddenly washed across his driveway. ``But I guess it could've been a whole lot worse.''
Kitty Hawk Volunteer Firefighter Ed Szymanski agreed. ``At least a lot of folks had already gone for the holidays,'' he said. ``And I'm real glad we didn't lose any houses this time. I think we were all pretty lucky.''
Transportation officials closed Route 12 at 5 p.m. Saturday after 10-foot waves crashed over a wall of sandbags and flooded the highway on Pea Island during three consecutive high tides.
Road crews spent two days trying to keep the road open, but they finally gave up at dusk and were sent home.
``Mother Nature may not take any holidays,'' Dare County spokesman Charlie Hartig said Saturday evening. ``But I think it's appropriate that our highway workers get to spend Christmas with their families.''
Some Hatteras Island residents may not get to spend Christmas with their families, however. With the road closed, the towns of Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco and Hatteras Village are virtually cut off. Residents can take a ferry to Ocracoke every hour today. And there are two ferries from there to the North Carolina mainland.
``I know a couple families who had planned to leave the island today to be with relatives for Christmas. Others had people coming in from out-of-town,'' said Hatteras Village resident Marlene Burrus. ``Now, I guess they'll just have to wait to see them until New Year's or something.''
Still, ``I think everybody is relieved, though, about the storm,'' said Burrus, whose back yard was flooded ankle-deep with water from the Pamlico Sound on Saturday evening. ``We were all expecting the worst. There's still some water along the side roads and up into people's yards. But no one got hit like they did during Emily,'' a hurricane that hit in August 1993. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Bystanders watch as the home in the 3500 block of Sandfiddler Road
owned by Robert W. Winstead of Richmond falls into the ocean.
Photos
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
Two Outer Banks residents walk along N.C. Route 12 in Kitty Hawk on
Saturday. Ocean overwash flooded the road, leaving it strewn with
mud and debris.
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Two Virginia Beach residents watch the surf pound the seawall at
Sandbridge on Saturday morning. One Sandbridge resident said more
bulkheads in the area were flattened out by the Christmas Eve
storm.
by CNB