Update

The roads are cleared and only residents are being let onto the island by the NC State Troopers as per noon today. Yea! I get my crew back and we can get to work on these houses and to call our owners with updates.

Paul Herman of Visual Data Systems, wonderful our web / computer consultants, will post some pictures I took on this web page. You have to promise me before you look at them, that you will use Hatteras Realty and come down to the beach for your vacation ASAP. They show a lot of damage, but most of it is on the Frisco and Hatteras Village Beach area. For the most part, Avon and Buxton are fine.

Will continue to update.
Punch drunk Stew

Hi, this is Stewart Couch, chief cook and bottle washer of Hatteras Realty, Inc.

My goodness, what a day.

First let's talk about the condition of our homes. We have divided our 450 homes into 23 zones of about 20 houses each. My crews inspected 18 zones in the last two days in our initial damage assessments and have 5 more zones to do. We should finish up tomorrow. We have called the owners on only 2 of the zones but I hope to assign the other zones tomorrow and get our owners updated by phone as to the conditions of their homes. In addition we will post the condition of the houses on the Ownernet section of the internet.

We estimate that fewer than 7% of our homes suffered major damage. Further, we expect 75% of our homes will easily be ready for rental when the Island reopens. Many more will be available with in the following week or so as minor repairs are completed.

I just spoke with Amy Helle, Bonnie Mueller and Stuart Pack, key Hatteras Realty personnel. About 45 of my staff members are still stuck in Rocky Mount, NC. I told 10 of the key staff people to drive to Manteo and rent a boat and get over here tomorrow. I don't care what it costs, just get here. I can send folk to pick them up as far north as Rodanthe.

Thank goodness for my 11 summer crew from Mexico. They have really been an asset to me and our company. They sat through the storm with me and 4 other staff members (it sure was crowded under that bed) in this office and have worked like fiends securing our homes, opening them up, and getting them ready for vacationers. They also are great cooks. I love the Latino song "Besame Mucho" but after eating great Mexican food with those jalapenos and chilies, all that comes to my mind is Johnny Cash's "Burning Ring of Fire."

The roadways are open from Rodanthe to Frisco, including Buxton. The power is on most of the island. I just found out that our water does not need boiling as the water checked out ok. Our telephone lines are working at our office. I am sorry but we are not answering. Most of my staff are out checking houses and only 3 folk are in the office updating our assessment list. If you want to talk with us, please be patient, monitor this site, and call us later in the week.

There are tons of sand on the roadways from Rodanthe to the Oregon Inlet Bridge, but DOT is feverishly working to clear Highway 12. I guess the bridge is ok, or why would DOT be working so hard to clear the road?

Hatteras Village remains cut off due to the ocean inlet created by the storm just north of town.

When can visitors come down to Hatteras Island? Just as soon basic services are restored. I guess the problem is that Dare County is concentrating on the Nags Head, upper beach areas first, then us second. The Island will not reopen until those basic services are restored. When that happens, we should have sufficient vacation homes available for all guests with reservations for the remainder of the fall. For home not available, we will relocate reservations to as comparable a home as possible. When we get back to normal operations, we'll be in touch with those guests who may need to be relocated. It should be at least a week before folk can come back.

For Guests who secured travel insurance all questions should be directed to CSA at www.csatravelprotection.com or 1-800-554-9839

Travelers seeking information or who want to use CSA assistance services: Please call 800-493-5199

Thanks for bearing with us in this troubling time,
Zombie Stew

Check in will be delayed today at your vacation cottage while we search for your front door. Little humor, here.

Power is on in parts of the villages except Hatteras Village. It is NOT on at the Hatteras Realty Avon office and we have no telephone service. Sprint says two weeks but I will raise holy heck until it gets up. My crews are still assessing damage. I will try and post to the ownernet section of our website details about each house. It will take 10 hours to transcribe so maybe Sunday afternoon, if we are lucky. We are so so short staffed.

Wow, what a storm. Will update later today. Stewart Couch

Stewart Couch here...(via poor cell service in Avon and transcribed by my web guy)

UPDATE:
All personnel are safe and the weather has broken. It's sunny with big puffy clouds. That is the good news...
To our Hatteras Realty homeowners and rental guests. All of Dare County including Hatteras Island, is under a 24 hour curfew. In the towns up on the mainland, they are very serious about the curfew and the police will chase you down and make you go home. Here on Hatteras Island, we must be a bunch of outlaws as everybody is riding around looking at stuff and enjoying the day, if that is possible after a really bad hurricane.

Our Avon office came through unscathed, but our Hatteras Village office may have been totaled. I don't want to be an alarmist but I will try and update you on what is going on here. We have almost no phones, no power, and we have to boil our water. Hatteras Village is even worse. Here goes:

We now have two Islands, Upper Hatteras Island and Lower Hatteras Island. At 4 PM today, I took my kayak and paddled across the 500 yard inlet separating Hatteras Village from lower Hatteras Island. Marianne O'Neal, our Hatteras Village Office Manager, met me and drove me around. The ocean has breached the dune line from the turn our in front of Hatteras Village a mile south to just past the Atlantic View Subdivision. Durant's, Billy Mitchell and the Sea Gull Motels are destroyed, as is the Hatteras Civic Center, the Taste Buds Bakery, the Pelican Convenience store and many homes have been washed into Pamlico Sound. The Hatteras Island Cabanas are almost all gone, pushed into houses on the other side of and down the road. We have no power and I had to go to many a rental house to find an outside line.

Inside Hatteras Village it is almost as bad. Everybody had their houses flooded, two marinas were heavily damaged. If nobody was killed from this, it is a miracle.

At dark I paddled my kayak at back to lower Hatteras Island to where my jeep was parked. It was low tide and the current was rushing through so fast that I almost got sucked out into the ocean and there would have been no witnesses. Who knew that Property Management was going to be such an action packed career?

There was 5 feet of water between Frisco and Hatteras Villages during the height of the storm. The swimming pools at the oceanfront homes in Frisco are all filled in and lots of damage to decks and steps.

Between Avon and Buxton the ocean breached the dunes in at least 4 places and cut them to ground level. The dune line is gone at the Buxton motels and lots of sand piled up on HWY 12. . I hear that Rodanthe north is impassable for miles as the dune line has collapsed.

I had 8 crews today doing damage assessments and we went through 16 zones, 12 more to do tomorrow. I do not have a pratical way to call my owners but I may fly staff out out in a private plane to a phone bank. I have 45 workers stranded in Rocky Mount and I can send the Avon Fishing Fleet across the sound and they can leave their cars there and go back and get them later. DOT does have a plan to run ferries between Stumpy Point and Rodanthe if the Oregon Inlet bridge is damaged. We have an employee that her husband works for DOT. She says they are clearing the roads from Rodanthe to the Bridge so maybe the bridge is ok.

Lots of shingle damage on just about every house and every 5th house has a broken window or two. Even still, Avon did not flood like Buxton and Hatteras Villages. With the extent of the damage up north we will not be able to get workmen to repair. Our owners should make preparations to come down bringing a handyman who can repair roof. I should have my owners called by late Sunday but it is out of my hands to know when Dare County will let people back in.

Even with all the gloom that I am portraying, this storm was not as bad as Hurricane Emily in 1993 for Avon, Buxton and Frisco. Hatteras Village is a completely different story. We can put our houses and community back together pretty quickly if we all pitch in ASAP. I don't know what is going on as I have been working 20 hour days trying to keep things together. Thank goodness for my 11 workers from Mexico. They are a godsend. Great cooks, too!

Please monitor the official websites listed below.

Thanks for bearing with us in this troubling time,
R. Stewart Couch

Stewart Couch here...(via poor cell service in Avon and transcribed by my web guy)

Dare County has issued a curfew from 8:00pm to 12:00 noon 9/19, for all of Dare County.

The damage has been considerable from Frisco to Ocracoke, and less so in Buxton and Avon. In Hatteras Village the ocean breached between the parking turnout and Roccos Pizza, a stretch of about one mile. The Sea Gull Motel, the Cabanas, Durrant Station, and The Pelican convenience store were all destroyed.

Flood waters pushed the laundry facility out of our Hatteras Village office and there is 4 feet of water inside the office.

Currently there is no electrical service on Hatteras Island and almost no telephone service.

Between Avon and Buxton the ocean breached the dunes in at least 4 places and cut the dunes to sea level. The Red Drum shopping center in buxton, my family's business, is under four feet of water.

The dunes are gone at the buxton motels and as a result they experienced great damage at ground level.

In Avon and Buxton there are a great number of homes with shingle damage and a number with broken windows. Even so, Avon did not flood like Buxton and Hatteras Villages. With the extent of damage up north we won't be able to get workers to repair the damage in a timely manner. Our property owners should make preparations to come down ASAP with a handyman or work crew who can also repair roofs. Most of my crew is in Rocky Mount (where they should be) and it will take several days to get them back and geared up. There is a tremendous amount of work to do and there are only a dozen brave souls here with me.

For Avon and Buxton this storm was not as bad as hurricane Emily in 1993. For the Frisco Beach community and all of Hatteras Village, it was much worse. We can put our community and houses back together quickly if we all pitch in. We will be working diligently to restore our community to pre-Isabel status, but it is going to take a group effort.

I am going to try to rest after 5 hours of sleep in the past three days, and will try to update you again in the morning.

Thanks... R. Stewart Couch

R. Stewart Couch, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer
Hatteras Realty, Inc. 

RODANTHE, N.C. -- If the north end of Hatteras Village is considered devastated, it's safe to say the north end of Rodanthe is disfigured. It was clear Saturday that Hurricane Isabel's path of major destruction extended at least this far up N.C. 12. About two dozen pieces of heavy machinery plowed away at a mile-and-a-half stretch of highway covered in 4 to 6 feet of sand near the northern edge of town. Just down the street, a four-block strip of oceanfront homes showed further evidence of Isabel's fury. ``It's a mess,'' said John Contestable, a Dare County building inspector who came to survey the damage. ``Some are just gone. We don't know where they went. And I would say some will be condemned, but that's not my call.'' 

At least four houses disappeared in the wind and water of Thursday's storm. All that was left were a few pilings standing in the sand. Two other homes were flattened and lay in a heap of shredded wood and mangled belongings. Another was swept off its pilings and rested 25 yards back on the sand, tilted to one side. It is unclear which homes were victims of the water and which were toppled by the wind. Several residents reported hearing a tornado roar through the area with the hurricane. ``It's absolutely amazing,'' said David Hayden, who came to videotape the destruction. ``I've been around for years, and I've never seen anything like this. The storm was like being in an airplane in rough turbulence. It just seems impossible that all this has happened.'' 

A few miles south, 13 mobile homes were ripped apart and scattered throughout Camp Hatteras Campground. Among many other things, a broom lay in the grass beside a home that looked like an unfolded cardboard box. ``It'll take months to fix all this,'' said T.J. Ketterman, distribution superintendent of the Dare County Water Department. 

As for the road north, workers were hoping to have it cleared by the end of the night Saturday or early today. But it stillmay not be cleared for public travel. ``We're just opening a path up for emergency vehicles to get through,'' said Steve Dillon, road maintenance supervisor for Guilford County. Dillon and his crew of 22 workers were called from Greensboro to help another crew clear the road. ``It's supposed to still be closed,'' he said. ``We were told they were shooting for Monday to re-open the road for travel'' 

In the upper Outer Banks, residents who had evacuated were allowed to re-enter for the first time since the storm. Residents and workers could enter Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills with proof of their addresses or employment. In Kitty Hawk, only residents were allowed to enter. All traffic was turned away from roads leading to South Nags Head and Hatteras Island. 

At times, long lines of cars formed while highway patrol troopers asked drivers to prove they lived or worked in the Outer Banks. Throughout the Outer Banks, stores began reopening Saturday, and traffic gradually returned. An advisory to boil water was lifted in the northern towns of Dare County, but residents using wells were advised to have their water tested by the health department and boil it until then. On Saturday, county officials said Isabel caused $607 million worth of destruction in the Outer Banks. More than $300 million was on Hatteras Island . At least 450 structures sustained severe damage, according to early estimates. 

Saturday afternoon, Nick Napolitano, manager of Ocean Site Court in Nags Head, drove into the parking lot of his oceanfront hotel to find a yellow condemnation notice. A dune that had protected the motel was gone, and a building's 4-foot concrete foundation had crumbled when the sand beneath it was eaten away. The building collapsed and twisted, ruining four units. ``I'm just going to pick up the pieces and start over one brick at a time,'' Napolitano said. 

Perhaps the most dramatic damage in the upper Outer Banks occurred in Kitty Hawk. Police said more than 20 homes along the Kitty Hawk oceanfront were destroyed or severely damaged when waves pounded through dunes and washed over the area. The dunes that separated the beach and the road had either vanished or been reduced. Half of the Kitty Hawk Pier was sheared away, and most of N.C. 12 was buried under 4 to 5 feet of sand. 

On Friday, low-hanging power lines crisscrossed the sandy road, and half-buried debris from damaged houses poked out of the sand. Jagged concrete blocks, tipped garbage cans, contorted lawn chairs and splintered lumber slowed travel over the sandy roadway. At three places, ocean flooding had washed out N.C. 12, leaving temporary riverbeds lined with wedges of asphalt and debris. Along both sides of the buried beach road, houses showed various degrees of damage. Some lost only balconies and decks, while others appeared to have lost bottom floors. In several parts of Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk, the ocean met the U.S. 158 bypass, and in one spot, crossed it. 

The most badly damaged houses seemed to have been twisted off pilings and ripped apart, while others looked as if they had collapsed after sand eroded beneath them. In Nags Head, 26 homes were destroyed, county officials reported Friday. State-owned Jennette's Pier, which was renovated earlier this year, is gone. Only the pier house and pieces of lumber, strewn across the parking lot, remain. The Nags Head Fishing Pier was intact, but several boards were missing, and the pier house was damaged. 

Roanoke Island did not appear to sustain major flood damage, but trees crashed into numerous houses, tipped telephone poles and blocked roads. Officials said Friday that at least six Roanoke Island homes were ruined.

Reach Kyle Tucker at 446-2374 or kyle.tucker@pilotonline.com. 
Reach Darren Freeman at 252-338-0150 or darren.freeman@pilotonline.com.