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I

t is easier to count the number of homes that did not flood in Hurricane Irene than to count those that did in Hobucken and Lowland.

The two communities on Goose Creek Island in the northeastern reaches of Pamlico County were swamped by the storm surge. It was higher than most expected which is to say, higher than 2003’s Hurricane Isabel.

On Hobucken Road, a horse grazes near what’s become a common sight in Hobucken, the innards of water-damaged homes, put out to the street.

There is not yet an official count, but reports from the area say that only between 8 and 20 homes avoided flooding. The County Planner’s office says there are approximately 239 households — and 483 people — in Hobucken and Lowland. By those back of the envelope calculations, 90% of the homes on Goose Creek Island flooded.

A torn tin roof on a building next to the ICW canal, the body of water that separates Goose Creek Island — Hobucken and Lowland — from the mainland of Pamlico County.

It could be said that flooding coming in to a home is a private disaster. The waters are an uninvited visitor who stays briefly, then leaves and on the surface leaves little trace. But the damage is done and soon, that private disaster becomes a most public one. Drive along the roads in Hobucken — as elsewhere in the water-edges parts of Pamlico County — and the evidence of flooding is everywhere. On the rights-of-way – where the front lawns meet the asphalt – heaps of rugs, insulation, timbers, and the water-damaged personal belongings were piling up.

First, photos from Hobucken, the first town you reach after crossing the bridge over the ICW near the Coast Guard station:

Lives and households laid bare. On Hobucken’s main road, the contents of a flooded home are put outside.

It is on Hobucken’s main street, just before Highway 304 gives way to a dirt road, that we met Irene. Not the hurricane — we were visiting almost a week after the storm swept through town — but rather irene Florian. The home she rents there had 22 inches of water in it — four feet in the garage — during the hurricane. Irene has lived in Hobucken since the late 1990’s and lived all of her life before that in Lowland.

Irene Florian says that in Hurricane Isabel, she had three inches of water in the Hobucken home she and her husband rent. Irene was far different. 22 inches in the living area. About four feet in the garage. And yes, she’s heard the comments about her name in the wake of the storm.

Visiting Irene on Friday was her long-time friend, Gray Popp. Fifty years ago, they married men who were first cousins. Gray came out to pack all of Irene’s clothing and linens in to fish boxes so she could wash and dry them at her home in Grantsboro. It was something important to do she said, “to keep it from a-molding and a-mildewing.”

The contents that got wet inside her home are laid out in Irene Florian’s yard. Among the items, a case or two of Mason jars holding figs that Irene had canned. Gray Popp recommends using it in a bundt cake or mixed in sour cream. Irene’s secret ingredient for figs: a packet of strawberry Jell-O.

While Gray visited and sorted through the clothes for Irene, the two talked. Gray rattled off three names..maybe four… and that was all the people she knew of who hadn’t flooded this time in Hobucken. Irene said that over in Lowland, it was a few relatives — mother, sisters, brother, who were among the lucky ones. But that, they said, was it. Most residents of the island were like Irene, facing water damage in their homes.

A few years ago, Gray had had enough of it herself. She’d lived on Goose Creek Island for more than 40 years – but moved away in 2006 after “FEMA bought me out.” She misses her friends, she says, but not the hurricane waters. Or mosquitoes, which are legendary on the island.

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Posted Wednesday September 7, 2011 by Melinda Penkava

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