THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 1996 TAG: 9609180452
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PAUL SOUTH, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BODIE ISLAND LENGTH: 100 lines
In his 62 years, Ivey Evans has ridden out Hurricane Hugo, lost a fishing trawler, and stood face-to-face with all manner of nature's fury.
But he had never gone through an ordeal like the one he survived early Tuesday when gusty winds and soaking rains of up to four inches pounded the Outer Banks.
Evans and his dog, Gretel, were hit by what may have been a pair of tornadoes that ripped through the pre-dawn darkness early Tuesday at the National Park Service campground at Bodie Island. Sleeping in an 11-foot long camper on a pickup, Evans was one of two who suffered minor injuries in the storm.
Scores of other campers were unhurt.
``I was sleeping when all of a sudden there was all this wind and lightning,'' Evans said Tuesday afternoon. ``The trailer started shaking and then all of a sudden, `Kawoosh!'
``When I woke up, I was on the dunes. I don't know how far away from the trailer I was. It was so dark. It's a bad feeling.''
His body was covered with prickly pear cactus, known to the locals as ``pear pads.''
``When I went to sleep, I only had a sheet over me,'' Evans said. ``But when I woke up on the dunes, that sheet was gone. I had pear pads all over me, on my legs, feet, everywhere. I got up and started looking for my dog.''
Less than an hour later, Gretel, a tiny part-Pekingnese pup, was found safe under his truck.
``She had prickly pads all over her,'' Evans said., ``I've been picking them out all day. She only weighs about 10 pounds. I don't know how she got through it.''
The storm hit the campground shortly after 4 a.m. Witnesses said they saw two tornadoes, but the National Weather Service confirmed only one in the area.
Evans, a Dare County native who now lives in Fruitland, Fla., was visiting with his son, George, a Roanoke Island resident.
``We went down to go fishing,'' Evans said. ``About 8:30, it started raining, and we decided to call it quits. My tires were sort of sliack, so I decided to stay overnight.''
Evans was sound asleep in his queen-size bed when the storm hit, ripping his slide-in camper off the back of his 1996 Ford Supercab. The truck, with only 4,000 miles on it, was not seriously damaged. The metal camper was shattered.
``It was just demolished,'' Evans said. ``We went back down there, and I couldn't find anything. The bed was gone. I had a new cook stove, and it was gone. I had about $12,000 worth of equipment, and a new generator back there, and we haven't been able to find much of anything.''
Evans' son marveled that his dad lived through the storm. He sifted through what little could be salvaged of the camping equipment Tuesday afternoon.
``I found a frying pan that was all dented and wrinkled,'' said George Evans, 40, a transportation officer at the Dare County Detention Center. ``Everything I could salvage was like that. I don't know how he survived it.
``There was nothing left of it,'' Evans said of his father's campsite. ``He had chained down the camper with two half-inch chains, but it was gone.''
``I took some pictures for insurance purposes, but except for a few things, there's nothing but bits and pieces.''
Ivey Evans suffered a sprained wrist, a bump on the head, and a number of bumps and bruises. A second victim, Dorothy Kowaliw of Cobs Creek, Va., suffered bumps and bruises when her 31-foot motor home was flipped on its side by the high winds. Her companions - six cats and a dog - were found unharmed by Nags Head and Dare County rescue personnel.
Acting Chief Ranger Mike Anderson described the destruction.
``When I got there, Mr. Evans was already in the ambulance,'' White said. ``He was lucky that he was thrown from the bed of the truck, because the farther away from the truck you went, the smaller the pieces of the camper top were. It was torn to bits.''
Units from Nags Head Ocean Rescue and Nags Head Volunteer Fire and Rescue were the first at the scene. They were aided by the Dare County EMS and the sheriff's department.
``I don't think the people knew that they had been hit by a storm,'' Nags Head Fire Chief Tim Morrison said. ``The call we received concerned an injury. (Ocean Rescue Director) Bill Ryan had done a good job of taking care of the injured. We started looking in the dunes for any injured people and animals.''
The storm brought with it howling wind and pouring rain that also toppled a trailer and downed a number of tents at a National Park Service campground near the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Debris and camping equipment were strewn like toys from N.C. Highway 12 all the way to the nearby beach.
The storm shattered the windows in one Ford van parked at the campsite, spreading bits of glass throughout the area.
Acting Chief Ranger Mike Anderson said park and emergency officials arrived at the campground expecting the worst. Some 46 of the 120 sites at the Bodie Island campground were occupied at the time the storm struck. ``We were very, very fortunate,'' he said. I've been with the park service for 18 years, and I've never see anything like it.''
In addition to the tornado, the rains, up to four inches, caused minor flooding on Colington Road and on N.C. 12. Pools of standing water were common on the streets of Manteo, and as far north as Duck.
The rainwater had evaporated or drained away late in the day. But for Ivey Evans, the memory will never fade.
``I rode out a Hurricane Hugo with my wife on the Waccamaw River in South Carolina,'' he said. ``But I never saw anything like this. It was a bad situation. I just thank the Lord we were able to survive this. We were real lucky.''
KEYWORDS: TORNADO INJURIES by CNB