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Officials tour damage still remaining from Hurricane Florence
LELAND, NC (WWAY) — Yesterday marked four years since Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, destroying homes and businesses across the Cape Fear.
A lot has changed since the storm, but some impacts are still visible.
A bus tour carried local officials around Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender County today to see some of the remaining damage first-hand.
The journey kicked off in one of the cities hit hardest by the storm.
“We’re Boiling Spring Lakes — no lakes,” Mayor Jeff Winecoff said. “So we must get them back.”
Although most of the dams are still destroyed and the lakes are still empty, Winecoff says restoration is not as far off as it seems.
“We’re very close. I mean, we’re so close, we’ll know by next Friday whether we’re going to get that money,” Winecoff added. “Once we have it, we’re ready to go.”
Up the road in Burgaw, Mayor Olivia Dawson feels the lessons they’ve been taught in recovering from Florence will prepare them for future storms. She says today’s tour with so many officials gives her hope whenever the next storm strikes.
“I am very thrilled to know that there are so many working throughout the state working on flooding issues, working on the issues we have with water,” Dawson said. “Knowing that this is going to make an impact.”
Tony McEwen with the American Flood Coalition says a lot has been done since Florence to mitigate future flooding. McEwen says he’s committed to working with as many people as it takes to keep another Florence flooding situation from happening again.
“North Carolina has invested, along with maybe Florida and Louisiana, a large amount of resources to ensure that public safety, that private property, that tax-payer resources are more protected than they were before Florence happened,” McEwen said.
Although the Cape Fear hasn’t seen a storm make landfall since Hurricane Isaias in 2020, officials say with such a fast-growing population, it’s important to act now to prepare for the next tropical system.