 |
Episode #1908
Hurricane Isabel – Edenton, NC
Lewis: Mitchell Lewis, host
Muller: Chip Muller, UNCS-TV reporter
Knighten: Ann Marie Knighten, Town Manager, Edenton, NC
Martin: Jim Martin, retiree
Horton: Reverend Vonner Horton, Oxley Hill Baptist Church
Barnes: Harold Barnes, Senior Vice President for Development
and Programs, River City Development Corporation
Belch: Doug Belch, Emergency Services Director, Chowan County.
Wilkins: Pastor Clinton Wilkins, Pastor, Church of the Redeem
and Board of Education member, Washington County
Lawrence: Reverend Edna Lawrence, Pastor, Kadesh Zion Church,
Edenton, NC
Fitch: Christine Fitch, Mayor, Board of Education member,
Wilson, NC
Lewis:
Coming
up, a very special town hall meeting in Edenton to discuss
the impact of Hurricane Isabel —next, on Black Issues
Forum.
Voiceover:
Closed captioning of this program on UNC-TV is made possible
in part by a grant from the F. M. Kirby Foundation.
Voiceover:
This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV
from viewers like you. Thank you.
[THEME
MUSIC]
Lewis:
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this very special edition
of Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. Tonight,
we come to you via satellite from Edenton, North Carolina
from the Town Hall Council Room where we can discuss some
of the issues involving Hurricane Isabel, as well as have
people share some of their stories. Now, it’s been almost
a month since Hurricane Isabel came through the northeastern
part of our State. Here’s a look at the damage in a
report by UNC-TV reporter, Chip Muller.
Knighen:
Herman, yoo hoo.
Muller:
Ann Marie Knighten gives a tour of Historic Edenton.
Knighten:
Let’s see. He’s show me — right up to
here. That’s his high-water mark.
Muller:
She’s the Town Manager, and in charge of the massive
cleanup following Hurricane Isabel.
Knighten:
This is all the debris that sort of washed up, and this
is usually one of the most picturesque scenes in Edenton.
Muller:
A town worker scoops the mess from the Edenton waterfront.
Other crews plop piles of branches, tree trunks and leaves
into huge trucks. As the seemingly endless tangle of storm
debris slowly diminishes, the costs are piling up.
Knighten:
We’re still running numbers. I’m thinking
from the town’s standpoint, we’re looking at over
five million dollars worth of damage to our electric system,
to our water and sewer system, and to our public buildings.
It’s huge for a small town like Edenton.
Muller:
Edenton is one of the towns that took the worst of Isabel’s
force.
Knighten:
It was so rough that it knocked the front porch off of
the Creighton House, and they said it was almost a miracle
that it missed all the houses. I mean, every single person
along here can tell you about the fear of, “Is that
porch going to slam into my house?” And it slammed into
a big pecan tree right here, and the tree fell that way, away
from the houses.
Muller:
It also ripped up the sidewalk here and, Knighten thinks,
the sewer underneath. Winds felled trees and uprooted burial
vaults in the town-owned cemetery. The storm tackled countless
utility poles and transformers. That’s a big problem
here. Unlike more towns, Edenton owns its own electricity
company.
Martin:
This was flooded this deep during the storm, and all the
connections have been wet. They’re working right now,
but the corrosion is starting.
Muller:
Jim Martin used to run the utility operation here. The
town pulled him out of retirement to guide an inspector from
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Male
voice: We’re looking at storm-related damages here.
And it used to — it has to be a fairly obvious indicator
that some trauma occurred here.
Lewis:
Ann Marie Knighten, the town manager of Edenton is here
with us this evening. Welcome to Black Issues Forum.
Knighten:
Thank you.
Lewis:
First of all, where do you stand right now in the process?
Knighten:
Well, we continue to make progress every day. We still
have a tremendous amount of debris to be collected, and we
have a contractor working on that. I think our next big priority
is trying to find help for the people that still need their
houses repaired, trees off of houses. We have identified those
needs, but we really need people to come and help those people.
Lewis:
Now, are you having challenges as far as finding the funding
for all this cleanup effort?
Knighten:
Well, we’re hopeful that through FEMA and through
the State of North Carolina that the debris removal will be
reimbursed to the town one hundred percent.
Lewis:
Thank you, Miss Knighten. Now, we also have three very
special guests on our panel to discuss what is going on and
the progress being made as far as cleanups and what can be
done to better prepare for Hurricane — well, for
the next hurricane that takes place. Our first guest
is the Reverend Vonner Horton of the Oxley Hill Baptist Church,
and we have Harold Barnes, who is the Senior Vice President
for Development and Programs of River City Development Corporation,
and we have Doug Belch who is Emergency Services Director
for Chowan County. And welcome to Black Issues Forum.
All:
Thank you.
Lewis:
Now, Reverend Horton, I’ll start off with you. Once
Hurricane Isabel came through, what were some of the things
that you noticed when you first got on the scene?
Horton:
Well, I reside in Martin County. I pastor in Bertie County,
and once I came to the county, I guess the parental instinct
that I have saw the need of the people, and that Sunday immediately
following the hurricane, we had our morning service. And just
being in the presence of the people and seeing a degree of
distress and concern and hopelessness, I knew that we had
to do something, at least as a church.
Lewis:
Mr. Belch, I know you were probably very busy during that
time. What were some of the things you saw?
Belch:
Well, it was kind of hard to explain. I guess, you know,
you’re used to seeing the beautiful scenes of Edenton,
the beautiful trees, the pictures, and there wasn’t
a street you couldn’t go into in the town of Edenton
that there wasn’t a tree down. And trying to make sure
that, you know, were people okay, and how were they doing,
and what were their needs going to be. That was the things
that we were concerned about right at that particular time.
Lewis:
And, Mr. Barnes, what did you see initially?
Barnes:
Initially, I saw a situation in which it looks like a
war zone in many areas in my county, and the tremendous thing
that was — that stood out the most — is that
you had all of these trees that fell in people’s yard,
but eighty percent of them fell away from houses, and that
was almost amazing. And the other thing was that people just
simply needed help, and we did all we could to help them.
Lewis:
Mr. Belch, when you arrived on the scene, what needs were
there that you saw that had not been met or needed to be met?
Belch:
Well, of course, you know, throughout the whole, entire
Chowan County, we had no power. They had no water and, you
know, unable to be able to provide food for the citizens of
Chowan County and the town of Edenton. See, we had to make
sure that we were trying to get those resources in by requesting
them through the State of trying to meet those urgent needs
and the life threatening needs — make sure people
were safe, unharmed. Was there going to need to be search
and rescue missions for citizen that, you know, may have been
unaccounted for?
Lewis:
Reverend, in your efforts to try to provide help for people,
what were some of the things you noticed that were lacking?
Horton:
Bertie County, being the third largest county in the State
of North Carolina, yet being a very rural community, there
was a problem with having so much power outage and having
so much debris that people could not get to particular locations
and outside of their individual communities. And so, therefore,
one of the first things that we saw was no availability within
the individual communities in the county that would assure
those persons that their needs were going to be met in a most
timely manner. And so I had to really begin to take a look
on that Sunday, what could be done, and then, basically, just
determining that one of the first needs according to Maslow
is the physiological needs and trying to provide shelter,
food and water and everything else. Once getting people sure
that those things were going to be taken care of, even if
it had to be through the entity of the Church, was my greatest
concern.
Lewis:
And Mr. Barnes, what were items that you felt needed to
be taken care of that were kind of short-handed there?
Barnes:
I think the most important issue was the lack of coordinated
information as relates to protocol, how to get certain supplies
and things of that nature. So, one of the things that we did
first was to put together a list of phone numbers of people
to call, whether it was FEMA, or the Red Cross, or the Salvation
Army, or any of those agencies, and also a list where a phone
could be found to do that, because most people were without
phones as well as electrical power.
Lewis:
And I’d like to remind our audience that you can
come in and ask questions or give your account of what happened
to you during Hurricane Isabel, and I believe that we have
someone here. State your name, Sir.
Wilkins:
I’m Pastor Clinton Wilkins from Washington County,
Plendel-Roper, North Carolina, Pastor of the Church of the
Redeem. We’re an outreach ministry, and I also serve
on the Board of Education there in the county.
Lewis:
What was going on in your area once Hurricane Isabel hit?
What were some of the needs that you saw that were immediate?
Wilkins:
As Reverend Horton just stated, the needs were physical
— make sure that they had food, water, and shelter.
And those are some of the major things that we saw. The Sunday
morning after the hurricane has passed through, our service
was interrupted. We stopped probably within fifteen minutes
of the service and told the congregation, “Look, we’re
going to have to no longer do business as usual. We’re
going to just get out in the streets, and we’re going
to help meet the needs of the people.” The Mayor of
Plymouth and the FEMA representative came up, and we told
them that we were interested in being a distribution site.
We had two in our community, Spring Green Church of Christ
and our church where we set up distribution for ice water
and food, and also we were able to put together vehicles where
we went out in the community, knocked on doors where disabled
families could not come out in wheelchairs, and we took them
ice and food and — but there are still great needs
in the community. We only served as a distribution center
for two days. Then, it was shut down. It was moved to other
parts of the town, but yet there were still great needs and,
even as of today, there are needs, and my question is, is
there still help, you know, for a Tier One county demand,
that we can continue to supply those people who have limited
incomes. They are still calling, you know, that they need
help.
Lewis:
I’ll address that to the panel. Does anyone seem
to have an answer to his question as to, are there other services
available for people to try and get assistance?
Belch:
Well, certainly, FEMA is still there and the local agencies.
I know in our community, many of the larger churches and also
from Raleigh, the Methodist Church and other groups that came
down and provided those services. I think the biggest issue
is, where do you send all of this information, and how do
you get it back? And I found that that was one of the problems
and still exists at this time, and that is the central point
for getting information out. I know that Hurricane Floyd —the
Governor created Flood Recovery Centers, so everyone in the
community knew to call to that agency, and that agency had
information, you know, from the Governor’s office on
down as to where to get these services. So, I think that needs
to be better coordinated at this point.
Wilkins:
The reason I asked you that — because, you know,
Washington County — we said “disaster”
but it was “catastrophe” for us, and yet, I understand,
like in Raleigh — you know, we didn’t get a Category
Three or Four but, yet, we had a Two that came through —
ninety, a hundred mile-an-hour winds and they felt, you know,
they missed the big one but, yet, we are suffering. And even
though we have families who had no insurance, homes were totally
lost, yet FEMA tells them that they were — income level
is too low in order to help them. See, so where do we get
help for our people?
Horton:
I think one of the things that I would suggest is what we
did at Oxley Hill. First of all, as churches, as Pastors and
overseers of the flock, we first must take the initiative
and show the concern for our people. What we did when we first
started out was there was no electricity in that community.
Bertie County being an extremely large community, we took
the initiative — I took the initiative the very first
day to call Roanoke Electric Company and say, “Can you
get me power at Oxley Hill?” Of course, did not understand
at that time the dynamics that involved the power outage and
no power at the substation. What I did, I said, “These
people need some help. If you can’t get me power, what
can you get me?” The President, the CEO of Roanoke Electric
then said, “Pastor, because of your concern, if I got
you a generator…” I said, “Get me whatever.”
He went to Raleigh, brought a generator to Oxley Hill and,
at that time, we served for the first eight, nine days there
after that storm, over a thousand people a day, hot meals
off of two burners and gas grills that were given by the membership.
We generated, we operated off of the funds of the church.
We got no assistance from any place initially, except for
the fact that we believed that if we took our two fish and
five barley loaves of bread, that God would give the increase.
So, certainly, there has to be some ownership as far as the
community itself goes, and then a desire of the pastors to
demand particular things. When I started out, I got no assistance
from the Albemarle Food Bank, but because I remained persistent
with the vision that God had given, now — once we concluded
the hot meals, we had distributed over three hundred care
packages a day. And this is not just Bertie County, but we
have also supported persons coming from Washington County,
Chowan County, Martin County, Hertford County, Perquimans
County. Our desire is not who the persons are, but there is
a need. We have assisted regardless of race, gender, age,
social status. We have not turned anyone down, and my desire
is to see that maybe government itself would see that there
needs to be more hubs set up in the individual community,
so that when these things take place, everybody knows that
there is a safe haven within their community without having
to try to find transportation thirty miles away to tell someone
that they have a need right there. And that’s what we
initiated, and through that, we had American Red Cross to
come in to provide us assistance. We’ve had individuals
out the Governor’s office to come through. We’ve
had individuals from the General Baptist State Convention.
We’ve had FEMA there almost on a daily basis. They need
to know that there is some place they can come, as well, to
contact the people within the community, and then our responsibility
was to tell them what our people needed.
Wilkins:
I understand what you’re saying but, yet, FEMA and
the Red Cross and the other ones, they have left the communities
now, but there are still needs.
Horton:
Then you utilize those 1-800 numbers, and I tell my people
…
Wilkins:
Absolutely. I mean, we do that.
Horton:
…call more than once.
Lewis:
Mr. Belch?
Belch:
I would like to add — about two years ago in
Chowan County, we started a process working with a lot of
the churches, starting an interfaith group. And that has worked
real well with us in Chowan County during Isabel. We weren’t
hit as hard as like a lot of other communities were during
Hurricane Floyd. We were very fortunate, but we were able
to — with the Interfaith’s help and a lot
of our volunteers — I think, on the Sunday after
the storm, we had a phone bank set up and using interfaith
to start taking applications to help, you know, get those
people registered with FEMA and try to maybe get ahead of
the game toward an unmet needs process, is what we were trying
to do. So, we have used that process to work, you know, trying
to aid citizens as best as we can.
Wilkins:
It is important to get things in place before disaster
comes. Thank you.
Lewis:
Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Still have more
people wanting to come to the mike.
Lawrence:
Yes, I’m Reverend Edna Lawrence, and I’m the Pastor
of Kadesh Zion Church here in Edenton, and I would like to
agree with Reverend Horton. It’s most important that
the churches step up to do what’s necessary for the
community. We had a lot of damage to our church. In fact,
we cannot work at Kadesh because of the storm, but I must
commend that our members felt a responsibility to the community.
On that Saturday, they brought things from home, from out
of their freezers. They got the grills together, and they
started cooking — not for the members, but for
the community. We served a little bit over fifteen hundred
people, and we did it, basically, without power, without a
place of worship. But we felt that there were some ninety-year-old
individuals down the street from us that needed someone with
them, so I went over to the recovery center, and I was trained
to do the FEMA applications. And I spent a number of hours
on the one working phone at church helping elderly members
with the — not only the FEMA applications, but also
contacting their insurance companies, processing — helping
them to process that application online. Because we found
out that the elderly, not only were they afraid concerning
the storm itself, but they had health conditions that needed
to be addressed. They lacked trust in individuals. I don’t
believe that the people at FEMA could do what we were able
to do, because saw familiar faces. When those elderly people
saw a familiar face, they felt like when everything is over,
they could still reach Reverend Lawrence or any member of
Kadesh. So, our situation of being that little hub in the
community worked well for not only our members but, also,
everyone. The lines at the recovery center were very, very
long, and the elderly cannot stand in a line for four or five
hours, so by having little satellite places in each community
to help to take some of the weight off the armory for the
recovery center, and also I think it gave a good break for
the FEMA and Red Cross workers, so I agree with her. There’s
so much more that the church can do for the community.
Lewis:
Thank you so much for your comments. Yes, Mayor.
Fitch:
Hi. I’m Christine Fitch from Wilson, North Carolina,
and I’ve lived through several Hurricanes. We lived
through Fran. We lived through Floyd. And we weren’t
as badly hit, but we have been hit with Isabel, as well. One
of the things that I think it’s critical to understand
is that it’s important as the people are seeking assistance
go after that help, they need to know that they have certain
paperwork that has to be gathered together. And you talk about
the outreach centers and the small hubs. It may be good to
have a conduit within those facilities where people can bring
their information, so that when their houses are destroyed,
when there is lack of places to go and recapture the information,
it is there. There is a tremendous need. As I drove in today
from Wilson — and I serve on the Board of Education
in Wilson and was a candidate for Congress in this district
— I see more the devastation that has affected
here. And every time there is a hurricane that hits in Eastern
North Carolina — it may be Edenton today, it may be
Bertie County tomorrow — but every time, there
is a dense need for assistance, and we need have to begin
to come together and share the ideas and the resources that
we have and that we benefit from from one hurricane to the
next. Thank you.
Lewis:
Thank you for sharing.
Wilson:
And I promise to brief. I am Diana Jones Wilson, President
of Faith Partnerships, and we have a few questions from the
audience that I think we can really work towards solutions
later on, but one is about food stamps and who’s eligible,
and what are the challenges when you’re in the midst
of a disaster situation. The second is about and what happens
when people that think they should qualify for FEMA assistance
and told that they do not qualify, particularly the elderly.
And the other is about the removal of trees and stumps. There
have been an incredible series of abuses, we think, of the
cost for having trees and stumps removed from yards and from
the roofs of homes, and we’d like to be able to talk
about how we go forth in the future with some solutions.
Lewis:
Mr. Barnes, would you like to start?
Barnes:
I think one of the things that we have to be mindful of
as relates to gauging — and there was quite a bit
of that as relates to tree removal — one of the things
we did in our community is try to put out the numbers. There
was a specific number you’d call if there’s fraud
or people trying to take advantage of you. But neighbors have
to take care of neighbors, as we’ve said here before,
and when there’s an elderly person in the community,
then we need to make sure through the churches, through civic
groups and other ways that those people are taken care of.
And so, I think it’s just simply working closer together.
One of the great things that can come out of this whole process
is that a government must understand that it must work as
a partner shoulder-to-shoulder with faith-based organizations
as well as civic organizations to be in place when these things
happen. They have to shoulder some of that responsibility.
Lewis:
Mr. Belch?
Belch:
I think one thing we have tried to stress with, like,
fraud and price gauging was trying to get individuals to take
their time. I know in this type of situation, this emergency
situation, people want to move in a hurry and try to get things
done, but, you know, try to be understanding, try to work
with the people that are coming in, get prices that are fair
and reasonable. Don’t take that first price. Get written
contracts. Get what people are going to do for you, and then
try maybe with these faith groups and local government groups
— make sure that we can compare these things with
them, so that way, we can try to keep these price gougers
out of here. And we had some people that tried to do that,
and we tried to stay on top it as best we could to help citizens.
We were there to help them.
Lewis:
Reverend Horton, how did you go about — or are you
making sure that people are educated on what they need to
do to get out of the situation they’re in?
Horton:
One of the things is utilizing the time that I’m at
the church to encourage the people to bring whatever their
concerns, have them to make some of their calls from the church
where they can get the assistance. One of the concerns that
I would like to address is the one with the Food Stamp situation
that maybe there needs to be some kind of appeal made to the
State because, certainly, in Bertie County because of the
length of time that it took Corain and Merry Hill communities
to get power, that many of the persons, once they found out
about that window of emergency application, it had already
passed. And there needs to be something done where these persons
can have an opportunity to go back and re-apply. And one other
thing is to have those individuals maybe make some contacts
utilizing telephone numbers — direct them with the FEMA
situation, that if are denied — especially because of
insurance — to hold it until your insurance have settled
and then call back with your registration number and reopen
your claim. These are things that people don’t understand,
so when they get the information from FEMA, they would generally
discard it. But I’ve asked Oxley Hill persons to do,
“Bring me your application. Bring me your response.
I will make the contacts to those individuals and see if they
will give us clarity on what is actually being said.
Lewis:
And we have to stop it right here. To our guests, I thank
you very much. To our audience, thank you so very much. To
the town of Edenton, thank you for your hospitality, for having
us here. This has been Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell
Lewis. For more information, you can go online at www.unctv.org/bif.
Thank you for watching. Good night.
[THEME
MUSIC]
Voiceover:
This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV
from viewers lie you. Thank you.
Voiceover:
Closed captioning of this program on UNC-TV is made possible
in part by a grant from the F. M. Kirby Foundation.
|
