North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue tours destruction left by Irene
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue had long planned spending Sunday on her state’s scenic coast. Like thousands of others, she and her family had rented a beachside cottage for a late-summer week of R&R. The vacation, on Emerald Isle, was scheduled to start Saturday.
She made it to the beach, just not in the way she expected. The day after Hurricane Irene plowed across North Carolina, Perdue was touring the most affected areas, making note of ‘wish lists’ from local emergency management officials cleaning up in the aftermath of the storm.
She was in Morehead City late Sunday afternoon, paying a visit to the Carteret County’s emergency operations center. (At one point, above, the car she was traveling in got stuck in mud and had to be pushed out.)
PHOTOS: In the path of the storm
The sense of relief in this coastal county was palpable: There were no deaths reported -- although six people died in other parts of North Carolina -- and structural damage was minimal. Jo Anne Smith, the county emergency services director, said the big problem was the lack of electricity, particularly in the flooded and low-lying eastern part of the county.
Without electricity, Smith said, people couldn’t cook. She told Perdue that trucks had been sent out with pallets of military meals-ready-to-eat to those eastern communities, many of which had moderate to serious flooding.
Perdue, trailed by a gaggle of local media, acknowledged the severity of the loss Irene caused, even though it wasn’t as severe as some expected.
‘We have six people that have died, which is a huge number for a hurricane of this size, and that’s a real tragedy,’ she said.
‘Thank God it was a [Category] 1-- but it was a BIG one,’ she said. Perdue is a relatively rare species these days: a Southern Democratic governor. She said, numerous times, that North Carolina had benefited from God’s mercy.
She also hinted, with levity, at other supernatural powers at work. ‘My mama’s name was Irene,’ she said, ‘so I’ve been saying she didn’t want me to go on vacation.’
ALSO:
Hurricane Irene: No one ‘dodged a bullet’
Hurricane Irene: Atlantic City casinos to reopen Monday
Hurricane Irene: Actor Jim Caviezel among New York evacuees
--Richard Fausset