THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501140181
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND, N.C. LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Local builders, national officials and more than two dozen volunteers helped National Park Service employees raise the roof Friday.
As drizzle fell from steely clouds on a balmy January morning, a team of workers constructed a three-bedroom home at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. The 1,450-square-foot structure will replace an aging trailer. It will become home for National Park Service employees.
Labor, materials and appliances for the house were donated by manufacturing, construction and building-supply companies.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore covers 30,319 acres from Oregon Inlet through Ocracoke Inlet. About 90 permanent employees and 100 seasonal assistants work for the National Park Service on the Outer Banks. The federal agency provides housing for about one-third of its permanent staff and for more than half its seasonal workers.
Much of the park service housing is old, deteriorating and desperately in need of repair. Rust has eaten through metal roofs. Floors have rotted, allowing snakes and mice access. Seasonal employees are bunking in trailer living rooms. One permanent ranger lived in a cabin with 10 square feet of living space per family member.
``All of you know how bad the housing problem is at Cape Hatteras,'' Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt wrote in a statement delivered at Fort Raleigh on Friday. ``You've got 33 trailers - many in substandard conditions - that need to be replaced here. With the help of people like the Home Builders, the park hopes to construct some 37 low maintenance homes to replace all the trailers and four houses now threatened by erosion.''
Babbitt had planned to help build the first Cape Hatteras Seashore house on Friday, but he was called away to work on the wolf restoration project in Yellowstone National Park. Instead, his chief of staff, Tom Collier, helped erect walls at the Roanoke Island building site.
National Association of Home Builders President Thomas N. Thompson joined the construction crew. His organization, and the North Carolina chapter, played a primary role in getting the home built with donated materials and free labor. Nags Head builder Carl ``Pogie'' Worsley supervised the project.
``During the hurricanes and other severe storms . . . National Park Service personnel are always there to assist our communities in emergency repair and cleanup operations,'' Worsley said. ``This is a way for us to give something back to the park service for all the help they've given over the years.''
For fiscal year 1994-95, Congress appropriated nearly $24 million for new National Park Service housing. Half of that money will be used to replace 659 trailers in parks throughout the country. Additional funds will be requested next year, Babbit said.
The Cape Hatteras house is the second structure built and donated for the National Park Service with those funds. Babbitt helped volunteers construct the first one, a log dormitory at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
``The men and women of the Park Service who work long hours in tough conditions . . . deserve better than we've been able to give them,'' Babbitt wrote. Volunteer builders are ``showing how the involvement of `can do' people in the communities around our parks really makes a difference.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON, Staff
Tom Collier, center, chief of staff for Secretary of the Interior
Bruce Babbitt, and Charles Mullen, president of the N.C. Home
Builders Association, help steady a wall being nailed into place on
the new home on Roanoke Island for park service employees.
Outer Banks contractor Carl Worsley, foreground, supervised the
building of the house at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on
Roanoke Island. ``This is a way for us to give something back to the
park service. . . ,'' he said.
by CNB