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At the corner of New and South Water Streets, M&M’s took on water and in the foreground, some of Gary Gresko’s “Waveform” sculptures went down, despite having been tethered in to place pre-storm. The sculptor works with recycled materials; these were made of one-time dock planks.

At Hodges and South Water on the way back. An hour in to the canoe ride, the top of the red stairs leading to the Inland Waterway Provision Company are emerging from the water.

Mike Vardy emerges from his house on South Water. One of the original “Pickles Row” houses, it had water in it at the peak of the storm.

On South Water Street, a boat gets within a few feet of being launched.

Back to where the canoe trip began. TownDock HQ’s had a tree fall across the front yard. The post in the center of the photo holds the TownDock Weather Station. Note the difference in the water levels between this photo, and …

…this one, taken about an hour earlier when water levels were higher and Jack dog paddled after the canoe. The waters were to recede as the winds clocked around to the south and pulled the water at the end of Pamlico Sound toward the ocean.

If you were to walk the same route this week, you might look around and decide that it didn’t look like much hurricane damage was done. That’s because much of the coverage that hurricanes gets is devoted to describing how fast the winds went and what structures took a direct hit from them.

But in Oriental, it’s not the wind as much as the water that does the most direct damage during hurricanes. Just a fraction of an inch of water on a home’s floor, or below the floor in the duct work, can mean a long process of repair. Even though Irene’s waters were not around for long, they left a mark in many homes and businesses, which this canoe tour may help explain.

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Posted Sunday August 28, 2011 by Melinda Penkava