DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997                TAG: 9703240033

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CAROVA BEACH, N.C.                LENGTH:  146 lines

CAROVA BEACH RESIDENTS WANT A ROAD OUT THEY WISH THEY OCCASIONALLY COULD GO NORTH BY BACK BAY WILDLIFE REFUGE.

At night you can see the distant orange glow of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront and dream, perhaps, about its restaurants, its jobs, its doctors, its night life.

But you can't get there, except by a tortuous route that runs along the hard sand beach at low tide, then down the road to Kitty Hawk before finally turning to the north.

Berkley Rhodes gets up every morning at 4, points his four-wheel-drive south and begins the long drive to a construction site in Portsmouth. Sometimes, at high tide, he has to stop and wait for waves to recede, then dash to the next safe spot. He doesn't get back until long after his wife, Cindy, has gone to bed.

But this is the life they chose 17 years ago and the life they continue to choose. ``You either love it or you hate it,'' he says. ``I love it.''

A lot of other people do, too. Just over the Virginia border, less than a mile from the edge of False Cape State Park, a community of more than 200 homes, ranging from trailers to million-dollar estates, is growing in the sand.

The only roads are paved with sand. There are no restaurants, groceries, bars, medical facilities, movie theaters, video stores or stop lights. A trip to the store is a 10-mile adventure on the beach. Forget something? Forget it.

Going to school means either an over-the-beach drive to Corolla and school bus ride to Kitty Hawk, or a boat trip across Currituck Sound to Knotts Island. Yet the children endure this, their parents say, because, again, the life in isolated splendor is worth it.

Most of the time, that is. It's just that, every so often, with the paved roads of Sandbridge a tantalizing 10 miles away, wouldn't it be nice to occasionally turn left on the beach instead of right and get to ``town,'' as most people call South Hampton Roads, in minutes instead of hours?

But, right at the border, stretching out into the surf, is a padlocked gate. ``Unauthorized vehicles prohibited,'' says a sign. Only a few people, those who became full-time residents before Dec. 31, 1979, have keys.

The reason is wildlife, mostly the winged variety, that reside at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the solitude they require for nesting, feeding or resting along migratory routes. For more than 20 years, driving motor vehicles along interior trails or the oceanfront has been banned.

This is being modified slightly this year, with special trams and buses taking visitors to False Cape through the refuge.

But for Carova Beach, the right to drive along the beach is an issue that will not go away.

Who does and who doesn't have the right to drive the beach route is a matter of sometimes bitter dispute. About 25 families have lifelong permission. So do one cattle and four fishing businesses and their employees. Why shouldn't others? Some want to know.

In January, a group of 10 members of the Carova Beach Homeowners Association petitioned the refuge for permits to take the beach route to jobs, schools and doctors. They offered to pay for the permits and to volunteer their time to help with refuge upkeep.

They were firmly turned down. Refuge Manager John P. Stasko replied that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations were the final word on the issue and could not be bent.

But pressure continues. In the past few months there have been five other requests, three appeals and several inquiries from congressional offices. As official gatekeeper, Stasko is a busy man.

Before the refuge was closed to traffic, Stasko says, it was common to have 150 cars going for Sunday drives on the beach, many doing 60 mph or better, some racing up and down the dunes.

``There's no question that traffic is a disturbance to wildlife, that it injures wildlife and injures endangered species,'' he says.

Most Carova Beach residents agree, or at least say they don't want a return to the bad old days. They did, after all, choose this place and don't want it disturbed.

Except for the beachfront, Carova is a dense forest of pines, live oaks and other low-hanging trees intersected by streets of soft sand. The only public building of any kind is the volunteer fire station, the community's meeting place as well as life saver.

Paul Endres and Denise Heffernan, both full-time fire and rescue workers, are checking out oxygen tanks clamped on the sides of the four-wheel-drive fire trucks. There are no water mains here, so the 1,000 gallons of water each of the trucks carries - about four minutes' worth - is good only for small fires.

Summer is when the problems begin, Endres says. That's when hundreds of people come not only to rent vacation places, but also to drive their four-wheelers and all-terrain vehicles.

``That's when this solitude and quiet turns into a mass frenzy,'' he says.

The biggest year-round problem is access to medical care, especially for elderly people with chronic illnesses. Last year, five people had to be flown to distant hospitals by helicopter. One needing the service so often was dubbed the ``frequent flier.''

Across from the fire station is the community's other gathering place: the mail boxes.

C.J. Allard stands by his 4X4. ``I just love the freedom of it, the quietness,'' he says.

Allard, who owns Honda Norfolk on Tidewater Drive, built the largest house on the oceanfront, a 5,300-square-foot dwelling with a peach slate roof and sprawling green lawns kept trimmed by a goat. It took the builder six months just to frame in the house.

But all that did not keep near-death from his doorstep.

About five years ago, staying behind to clean up after his wife left, he was stricken by a brain aneurysm. A 78-year-old neighbor drove him to Virginia Beach.

He didn't recognize anyone, even his wife, for several years, he says. But slowly the pieces fell back in place. ``I'm not complaining about it,'' he says, watching wild horses grazing near the mailboxes. ``At least I'm alive.''

Medical emergencies are the news here.

Richard Slate fell off his roof two months ago and broke several bones in his back. The ambulance had to take him down the beach to Kill Devil Hills.

But Slate - who used to rise at 3:30 a.m. to hike up the beach to Sandbridge in order to get to his job at an iron foundry in the Berkley section of Norfolk - isn't worried about the isolation. ``I'll survive,'' he says.

One thing about solitude is the closeness most people seem to share.

``If anything goes wrong, I know all I have to do is pick up the phone and somebody'll be there,'' says Cindy Rhodes, one of the petition-signers. She drives the beach every day to her real estate job in Corolla.

``It would be nice to know if there was an emergency that you could get to a hard-surface road in 20 minutes,'' she says.

As much as they feel their cases are urgent and special, if opening the refuge gate to them meant opening it for everyone, most would opt to keep it closed. ``I remember what it was like in the '70s, when hundreds and hundreds of people drove on the beach,'' Rhodes says.

Carova Beach residents pay a high price for their solitude. There are few jobs, mostly low-paying, all of them hard to get to.

Still, the special privilege of pre-regulation people who drive through the refuge gnaws at many longtime residents.

Marguerite Hogge knows how hard it is to get a refuge pass.

She and her husband, Pete, are driving on the beach on official business for the fire station. She also occasionally uses the route to take a neighbor, a permit-holder who had a stroke, to a Virginia Beach doctor.

As a lifelong resident of the Outer Banks, she had a permit. But while Pete worked at the Beach, first as an auto mechanic, then as a magistrate, he kept an apartment in town. She stayed home and commuted to a job at the Beach, but a refuge investigator trailed her for several days and ruled that she wasn't a full-time resident.

That's how tough the permitting process can be.

``People have just moved here and they think they're going to get a pass,'' she says. ``Well, I've got news for them.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

A wild horse canters along the dune line at Carova Beach as a driver

cruises south. The sandy beach is the only mode of access for

residents of the Outer Banks community, who must travel miles out of

the way to shop, dine out or get to medical care.

Map/VP KEYWORDS: CAROVA BEACH

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