’Looks like an earthquake came through’: Uprooted tree damages Fat Pelican bar during Hurricane Isaias

The popular Carolina Beach dive bar suffered flooring damage during the hurricane after being closed for months due to COVID-19

CAROLINA BEACH – Right behind the front door of The Fat Pelican, owner Danny McLaughlin has marked how high the invading flood waters rose during past hurricanes.

He’s been through six major storms since 1982, when he opened the popular Carolina Beach dive bar known for its eclectic atmosphere and decor, including the unmissable Lizzy the Octopus.

Rising waters from three hurricanes have earned a mention in Sharpie on the wall – Fran, Floyd and Bertha.

On Tuesday, McLaughlin luckily wasn’t adding a fourth name to his wall after Hurricane Isaias, which blew through the region Monday night as a Category 1 hurricane.

Instead, he was busy cleaning up after another menace to The Fat Pelican that came from below.

A tree hugging the shed-like local hotspot was uprooted by the storm’s 70-plus-mph winds, pulling its roots, which run under the bar’s brick floor, from the ground.

Inside, bricks packed into the ground from nearly 40 years of foot traffic were pulled from the sandy soil and left in a pile.

“It looks like an earthquake came through, not a hurricane,” McLaughlin said. “I got more damage off this one than I did the others. With the flooding, at least I could just pump it out.”

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The force of the uprooted floor also shattered a window and rose the building’s wall. Miraculously, the dislodged tree didn’t cause roof damage or disturb the nearby structural post, which McLaughlin anchored into the ground with cement when he built the Fat Pelican.

On Tuesday afternoon, he was cutting up the tree limb by limb before he planned to back his four-wheel-drive truck up to the building, wrap a chain around the trunk and finish what Isaias started.

Still, he calls this minor damage, at least compared to the challenges he’s faced all year.

The Fat Pelican is classified as a bar and therefore hasn’t been able to open for months under statewide COVID-19 restrictions. McLaughlin estimates he’s lost $400,000 in business since being forced to close in March.

In May, he got a financial assist from his devoted customers, who donated more than $14,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to keep the bar from closing permanently.

McLaughlin is still grateful for that immense show of support. But with yet another notch in the bar’s hurricane history and the damage to show for it, he said patrons in his bar is what he needs most right now.

“If I was open, I’d have money to pay for this (damage),” he said, cranking back up his chainsaw to dismantle another section of the tree.

“I’m just not making any money right now and now I’ve got this to deal with.”

Reporter Hunter Ingram can be reached at 910-343-2327 or Hunter.Ingram@StarNewsOnline.com.