Maria becomes hurricane again
WAVES, N.C. — Maria regained strength and became a hurricane again Wednesday, pushing water over both sides of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and taking its time to slowly turn away from the U.S. Atlantic coast.
No injuries have been reported, but the surge of ocean water washed over eroded beaches, flooding properties and state Highway 12, the only road through the narrow barrier islands of Hatteras and Ocracoke.
No ferries were moving, cutting off access to Ocracoke, and with parts of the highway flooded even at low tide, any travel on Hatteras remains hazardous, Dare County Emergency Management Director Drew Pearson said in an email. He said the worst problems were on Hatteras Island, where more than 10,000 visitors left under an evacuation order, but hundreds of local residents were allowed to stay.
The National Hurricane Center said an Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft measured Maria's top sustained winds at near 120 km/h, with higher gusts. Its centre was about 290 kilometres off Cape Hatteras at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
While Maria’s most punishing hurricane-force winds remained offshore, tropical storm-force winds extended for as much as 370 kilometres from the centre, churning up the surf on both sides of the islands. The hurricane's forward speed is just nine km/h, so the storm was lingering before swinging out to sea.
On Hatteras, a fine rain fell Wednesday, with patches of blue sky occasionally showing through. As the winds picked up, waves crashed up to and beyond ocean-front homes between the communities of Rodanthe and Avon, where the water has washed under waterfront homes and onto side streets since Tuesday at high tide.
“Mother Nature keeps chopping at it,” said Tony Meekins, 55, a lifelong resident of Avon who works as an engineer on the temporarily halted Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry. “We see storm after storm.”
This weather is only the latest tropical blow to the Outer Banks. Officials warned that the surge of ocean water and waves would overwhelm sand dunes from both the ocean and from Pamlico Sound, which separates the islands from the mainland.
That said, Texas, Florida, several small Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico have all seen worse this year. Puerto Rican officials said electrical power may not be fully restored for more than a month. More than 3 million of the island's U.S. citizens still lack adequate food, water and fuel.
Maria is predicted to erode more than half the dunes along North Carolina's 485-km coast. Beaches in Maryland and Virginia could fare even worse.
All that salt water “is like throwing battery acid on your car,” said Carrington Erhardt. “That's the biggest thing, is that it destroys the vehicles.”
Brent and Donna Bennett, of Buxton, worry about lost wages. He works at an ice cream shop, which is closed, and she can’t make it through the floods to her hotel desk job in Hatteras Village. “Storms are something you come to expect. We seem to have more of our share recently, and I'm over it,” Donna Bennet said.
Hurricane Lee, meanwhile, strengthened to a major Category 3 hurricane in the open Atlantic, where it was swinging north and east before damaging winds could reach Bermuda.
In Puerto Rico, the scope of the devastation is so broad, and the relief effort so concentrated in San Juan, that many people from outside the capital say they have received little to no help.
Maribel Valentin Espino, her husband and teenage son live in one such area, Montebello, a 20-minute drive into what used to be lushly forested mountains near the northern coastal municipality of Manati. Maria’s Category 4 winds stripped the trees bare and scattered them like matchsticks. It seemed like a monster,” she recalled. The roads are passable now, but the community is still isolated.
“Nobody has visited, not from the government, not from the city, no one,” said Antonio Velez, a 64-year-old who has lived there his entire life.
In Morovis, Manolo Gonzalez built a raft out of a plastic pallet buoyed by pop bottles to help neighbours ferry food, gasoline and other supplies across a river where a bridge was destroyed.