The Daily - A Dispatch From the Center of the Storm

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

North Carolina is facing a statewide crisis as the storm known as Florence slowly ravages the South, flooding cities, sending thousands into shelters and endangering communities from the coast to the mountains. Here’s what’s happening in one of those communities. Guest: Richard Fausset, a correspondent for The New York Times who has been covering the storm from North Carolina. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, North Carolina is now facing a statewide crisis as Florence slowly ravages the South, flooding cities, sending thousands into shelters, and endangering communities from the coastline to the mountains. A dispatch from just one of those communities. It's Monday, September 17th.

So Richard, you're based in the South, which obviously sees a lot of storms. What was the feeling about this storm as the weekend began? There was an incredible amount of anxiety, as you can imagine. The bands of this massive storm will soon be lashing our coast. The storm was growing in strength in the Atlantic, and the Carolinas have had a couple of traumatic storms in the last few years that have really put them on high alert. My message today, don't relax. Don't get complacent. Stay on guard.

As the storm approached, it started losing power, but it also started slowing down. And this was a really ominous sign for people who know how storms work. This is a powerful storm that can kill. Today, the threat becomes a reality. And the fear is that the wind wouldn't be as powerful in battering the coast, but this thing was just a monster and it was just going to squat on the Carolinas for days upon end, dumping an incredible amount of rain. And this was a real source of concern for people in the Carolinas because they knew that there would be numerous stages to this tragedy,

in fact, that they were living through now. Here's what you need to know about Hurricane Florence. It is shaping up to deliver disaster for days to the Carolina coast. Florence is now expected to pause right at North Carolina's coast, shift south, and pose even greater danger. On Friday, we started to see really catastrophic flooding in the small city of New Bern, North Carolina. Hurricane Florence is powerful, slow, and relentless.

It's an uninvited brute who doesn't want to leave. The storm surge alone has overwhelmed the city of New Bern. Richard Fawcett is covering Florence from North Carolina. We reached him on his cell phone on Sunday afternoon. It is an absolutely exquisitely beautiful small city of about 30,000 people. It's more than 300 years old. It feels like a mini Charleston or a mini Savannah or a mini New Orleans. Incredibly elegant homes, some dating back to the 18th century,

many from the 19th and early 20th century. But it's also at the confluence of two rivers. The Neuse River normally surrounds New Bern, North Carolina on two sides. Right now, the Neuse River is in New Bern, North Carolina. Now, the bank is usually about 50 feet that way. But starting this afternoon, that water pushed by that storm surge came right up out of the bank across Front Street here, and it started to push further back into these neighborhoods. And the storm surge just roared into the town over top the banks of the river, and a lot of neighborhoods were suddenly lakes. In fact, they had become so by the time I got there early Friday morning.

One of the hardest hit areas so far is New Bern, where this morning around 150 people awaited rescue after more than 10 feet of powerful storm surge flooded the town. We knew that overnight there had been dozens of rescues. People who thought they could wait out the storm found themselves suddenly in very rapidly rising river flooding. Hurricane 4, 2018, and you can actually see the water line on the house right here. People were rescued from rooftops. There were a lot of echoes of New Orleans.

People were very scared. The situation was very nasty. And describe the scene for us. When you arrive, how does it look and feel there? The town felt largely abandoned. It was a very, very gray day. It felt very ghostly. And also, just there's that sense of danger afoot.

The wind was still howling. There were pieces of and parts of buildings that were starting to kind of pull away. So we're, it's the 14th, it's Friday, right? Friday the 14th, yes. The hurricane is here. It's right on us right now. We're in New Bern, North Carolina, and I'm here with Steve and Sabrina. I showed up downtown and picked up this alderwoman, Sabrina Bingle, and her husband, who offered to drive us and show us around.

I'm the alderman for the first ward of the city of New Bern, and we're sitting in it right now. I'm also the mayor pro tem, which kind of means when the mayor's not around, I can act on his behalf. There are a couple who's very, very connected to their community. And this is all in my district that I represent. The district that Alderwoman Bingle represents, it has some of the hardest hit areas. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's a mess. And you can tell, look at that. Oh my goodness gracious.

Oh my gosh, yeah, it's a mess. And you can tell, look at that. Oh my goodness gracious. That's Cedar Street. Oh my goodness. And this is a predominantly African American area. Yes, absolutely. This included very historic areas, but also some deep pockets of poverty.

Can't go that way. Oh man. It's just like a bowl down there. It looks like it's maybe three feet deep down there. Yeah, it's come in their front doors, though. It looks like it's maybe three feet deep down there. Yeah, it's come in their front doors, though. It looks like it's deep enough back there that it's going to go in their doorways. And we started kind of crawling around the city. Yeah.

You've got water in the yard there, Steve. That was my grandfather's house. Oh, wow. Wow. Steve's business is 108 years old, and he's the third generation. Oh, my gosh generation running it. And it was kind of like a very morbid drive in the country in a way. If you have country relatives, that kind of two-finger wave that sort of signifies everything's okay.

This is sort of the opposite of that in a way. You okay? Are you okay? And I know people from all walks of life, the rich and the poor. Hey, Johnny, Steve, I trust that you're doing okay. If you need anything, call and let me know. And so as we're driving, you can really feel that this is going to be an incredibly busy and complicated and heartbreaking moment for Alderwoman Bingle. Her phone is just popping off all the time.

Hey, Miles. We're hanging, honey. We're doing the best we can. I'm out right now riding around trying to assess the damage throughout the city. It's pretty bad. I don't know if you can see the latest report. We've had 4,325 residences damaged, which equates to about 10,000 people and we haven't even touched the commercial stuff yet and we're still doing rescues. Hey how do I get this how

is this street doing phone calls that we're dealing more with the kind of bureaucratic realities of dealing with the storm. Does it sound about right that something like 200 people have been rescued this far? Yeah, it's probably in excess of 200 people. Can you tell me about them? Like, what kinds of, where were they? What part of town? They were all throughout town. I mean, it was families.

It was elderly. People who just didn't want to leave their property because maybe they were on dialysis or something but we were offering respite care, we were doing these things but people did not want to leave their homes. Then it got to the point of being dangerous and they had to be rescued. Now this was an area here Watson Avenue, these apartments here, the water was coming in the house and people were up on the roof right here because they had no second story, as you can see. This was in the middle of the night last night. Yeah, we were getting, you know, people begging us to come and help them in these apartments. The water had risen up. It was

coming in their door. I think there's a great empathy in her voice and in what she told me about the people who were being stranded and were being hurt. And I think she understood all of the reasons why people choose to stay, even though there'd been so many efforts to try to get people to leave. And what were those reasons why people stayed? Well, people in all kinds of storms like this, sometimes they just are cavalier and they just think, well, I can stick it out. Sometimes poverty is a reason. People don't feel like they have the means to get out or they're afraid that if they go, it'll cost them a lot of money once they're gone. The city of New Bern had used their parks and recreation buses.

We saw this one parks and recreation bus at one point that was stopping around from neighborhood to neighborhood, picking up people who don't have cars to get out. But if you just have very little in your pocket and very little in your bank account, the idea of spending two days might sound okay out in the world. But what if it becomes seven days? What if it becomes 14 days? Can you see the water straight ahead? Yeah, I sure can. Man, they are underwater still.

Underwater. A lot of rescues happened here last night. Look, they were going door to door in the pouring rain. Our son, Buddy, was... My son was here and another one of our aldermen, Alderman Jamisha Harris, trying to pull people out to get them to leave because the water was coming in their front door. One of the most glaringly tragic scenes that we saw was the situation in a public housing complex called Trent Court. Trent Court is hard against the banks of the river. It's a beautiful location. And a high tide was coming in. The water was rising.

There were still people up in those departments that were refusing to leave. And so the people who wouldn't leave or who had pets and didn't want to leave their pets, we told them to make food, get what they could, and go to the second floor and just stay upstairs because they wouldn't be able to come downstairs. Wow. Do you think you got everybody out of there? Well, we didn't get everybody out of there. We couldn't take the people who would not leave their pets

because we had no place to secure the pets. So that was an issue, and they would not leave their pets. You know, the shelters we did provide that were pet-friendly, you had to have a copy of their rabies shots and, you know, vaccine records, and a lot of people here were not prepared for anything like that. So there's still a lot of people in there, you, you know, vaccine records. And a lot of people here were not prepared for anything like that. So there's still a lot of people in there, you think? Probably, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I'd been to New Bern before in 2011 when they were recovering from, I believe, Hurricane Irene. And it's one of these places that if you have any modicum of a soul, you just care for so much with its graceful neighborhoods, with its beautiful old churches and graveyards. But you're really wondering how it's going to survive this incredible hit. Yeah, those streets all down there. This is pretty bad. Eventually, I had this deadline looming, and they took me back to their apartment.

We said our goodbyes. I thanked them profusely and did a lot of writing with the rain pounding on the rental car. And on Saturday, I'm spending the day in and out of New Bern tracking the storm. Right now, we want to get you out to the Emergency Operations Center where Governor Roy Cooper is addressing the media. Good afternoon. Powerful torrents of water are flooding homes, wiping out roads, and sweeping away cars in North Carolina. These cruel floodwaters are life-threatening and destructive. Good evening, I'm Jeff Glore in Wilmington, North Carolina,

and this is a special edition of the CBS Evening News. The rain will barely let up here on this coast for another 24 hours. The preliminary rainfall totals are staggering. The National Weather Service says more than 30 inches of rain was measured in Swansboro, North Carolina. That is shatters the state's tropical system rainfall record. By Sunday, I'm back in town trying to find out what Sunday looks like. What I found was that the city still felt very ghostly. It was a nasty morning. And the fear that had now spread

throughout North and South Carolina was of this second strangulating attack of the storm. As this storm continues to churn through North Carolina, it has dumped nearly two feet or more of rain in many places. The rain had fallen and we'd had the stage of flash flood concerns. The strongest storm bands are dumping two to three inches of rain per hour. That's enough to cause flooding in areas that have never flooded before. The storm surge had roared up the rivers, and we had seen the rivers rise as a result of those. And now the worry was all of the rain that was falling across the Carolinas, flowing back out toward the Atlantic, which means back toward

New Bern. So we were in a bit of a period of a lull, but everyone knew that this second attack was coming. I got to this church a few minutes out of town. It's called Temple Church. It's a church that usually has about 1,200 people on a Sunday morning, and there was no one in this vast ocean of parking lots around this contemporary building. The only thing that was really there were these trailers from the North Carolina Baptist Men, which is the name of the disaster relief arm of the North Carolina Baptists. We're here, and we're going to do everything we can do

with the number of volunteers and all that kind of stuff. So if you can imagine this scene, there are all of these men milling around in these signature yellow T-shirts and these yellow hard hats. And many of them are sort of scurrying around to assemble this feeding station where they say they can feed 30,000 people a day. And here's the other thing. We may not get new. The great fear was that New Bern was soon going to be cut off by the flooding

and nobody was going to be able to get in or out. Y'all, I'm from the New York Times. Can I ask you real quickly, Jimmy? You two guys are going out doing assessments today in New Bern. You're going to find out where there's problems, where there's trees down. And then ask, if you can, asking people if you can come back in and fix their problem if you can.

Don't use that word fix. Right. Right. Yeah. We'll come back and help. Okay. It was in the midst of all this that I came upon a gentleman by the name of Jimmy Lawrence, a retired garage mechanic in his 60s.

All right. I can tell you this. On the recovery side, what we do is we try to get them to where they can salvage as much as possible. So if we've got a flooded house, we're not going in and tear it out and put it back. We'll go in and we'll tear it out. We'll get rid of the wet stuff so the house don't mold. So we'll go in, we'll get the wet stuff out of the house. And he had laid out this big waterproof map of the New Bern area. And he was talking to a couple of other guys about how they could get out into the community and assess the damage and tell people that they might be able to fix their problem. They could probably chainsaw up and cut up their fallen trees.

They could probably gut their house. They couldn't give them any guarantees. But the one thing that could guarantee them, and I thought this was really lovely, whether you're a religious person or not, was that they're not alone. Imagine your house was five feet of water. And now you know, if you can just close your eyes and imagine that.

And now you know what those people feel. And it's almost unbelievable. And so I think sometimes it can make people wonder, you know, where is God? And we're here to let them know that they're not alone. And we'll pray with them and we'll do anything we can to help them. And by that, of course, the Baptists mean that we're here with you. And by extension, God is with you. But of course, incontrovertibly, what it means is they're there and they're there to help.

And this is the kind of fusion of works and faith that really permeated the whole day. People were not just relying on their faith to get through the storm, but were also really putting faith into action. Let's stay in touch. I may be stuck here with y'all for a long time. Maybe you can put me to work. Thank you, Jimmy. I left Jimmy Lawrence to his work at 1030. That was when the senior pastor for Temple Church, Jim Pennington, had sent out a call to those of his flock to come to church at 1030 a.m. And Pastor Pennington told them if they came, they should come in their work clothes to come prepared if they could to get to work and start helping to rebuild the city. I really believe that we express our love for God most tangibly when we love our neighbor.

I mean, it's easy to say, I love God. Put some boots on. Get your hands dirty. Express your love to God by helping your neighbor. He told me just before the service started that he didn't know if he was going to have five people or 500. I walked into this massive contemporary worship hall, state-of-the-art stadium seating, the whole deal. If you've been in a megachurch, it was just kind of textbook. But instead of the 1,200 people who were always there on Sunday, there were maybe 80 people.

And you know, as I've been telling people, we're going to shine bright in a dark night. You know, we're going to let folks know that they matter to God. And Pastor Pennington stood up and he passes the microphone to a woman and she says, we're going to sing old school this time. We're going to sing a cappella. So I want everybody to bring

a flood of God's love into this room. There's nothing worth more that will ever come close. No thing can compare. You're our living hope. And I realized later that the singing was a cappella because, one, the instruments had to be covered in tarps. And two, the people that were supposed to play them were scattered God knows where. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.

Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere. atmosphere. Your glory, God, is what our hearts long for, to be overcome by your presence, Lord. So Richard, it's late Sunday afternoon. What is the story of this storm at this point in your mind? The story that everyone fears is that the story has just begun. That we have a storm as we speak that's lost power, but it is still spinning over central South Carolina with bands of rain up into North Carolina. The riverbanks are swelling and swelling. And this entire region is just veined with rivers, bays, places where water is the reason for the towns to be. And these towns are all bracing for another disaster, and the concern, how do you fix two states that are largely

underwater? We're seeing incredible anxiety from communities, some out of the way, some kind of right in the middle of cities that are wondering how high the rivers are going to rise near them and how ruined their lives are going to be very soon. Richard, thank you very much. Stay safe. We appreciate it. Sure. Thanks, man. Hurricane Florence, now a tropical depression, has killed at least 16 people so far,

and North Carolina officials expect the crisis to continue for many days. We'll be right back. To be continued... of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago has come forward and identified herself as Christine Blasey Ford, a 51-year-old research psychologist at Palo Alto University in Northern California. Ford told the Washington Post that the attack took place at a party when the two were in high school.

She says Kavanaugh, very drunk, pinned her on a bed, groped her, and covered her mouth to keep her from screaming. I thought he might inadvertently kill me, she told the Post. He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing. Kavanaugh had previously denied that any such attack took place, but the Post's reporting includes interviews with Ford's husband and her lawyer, and describes notes taken by a therapist in 2012 when Ford talked about the attack. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are now calling for a delay in Kavanaugh's confirmation vote, which was scheduled for Thursday. On Sunday, at least three Republican senators, including a member of the Judiciary Committee, Jeff Flake, signaled that they could not vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation until they hear directly from Ford.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.