Cars Wait Hours to Leave Storm-Damaged Islands

Hundreds of carloads of tourists faced a 30-hour wait in line Saturday to leave North Carolina’s Outer Bank islands by ferry after a storm-tossed dredge a day earlier crashed into the only bridge linking the string of islands to the mainland.

Power and telephone service remained out on Hatteras Island, south of the collapsed Herbert Bonner Bridge, and emergency crews worked to bring containers of water to the island and to establish a shelter at a local school, where stranded residents could seek heat and food.

“I’m sure there are still hardships,” said George Spence, Dare County Emergency Management Coordinator. Spence said a generator was being set up on the island Saturday to provide emergency power.

The 200-foot-long Northerly Island dredge, which brought down a 370-foot section of the bridge across Oregon Inlet, was being pulled ashore in the late afternoon. The dredge, tossed by heavy seas and gale winds gusting to 90 m.p.h., hit the bridge, snapping the high-voltage power cables to Hatteras and stranding 5,000 people without direct access to the mainland.

Four of the 10 crew members on the dredge scrambled up an undestroyed part of the bridge while the others remained aboard the vessel.

Residents on Ocracoke Island, 70 miles south of the collapsed bridge, said hundreds of carloads of tourists formed long lines waiting for ferry service from the village of Ocracoke to Swanquarter and Cedar Island west of the string of islands.

“There are massive lines, we’ve practically got gridlock here,” said Jeannetta Henning of Black Beard’s Lodge in Ocracoke. “It’s not a very comfortable situation.”

Henning said portable toilets had been set up along the road but that gasoline was in short supply. “They’re having to stay in line and have to stay in their vehicles or they’ll lose their place in line” for the ferry, she said. “It’s a mess.”

Four ferries that can carry 40 vehicles each were running around the clock as of Saturday, she said.

Officials have said it could take six months or more to repair the 2 1/2-mile-long span that links the island to the Nags Head area.

The National Weather Service reported that the storm that ravaged the area had moved into the North Atlantic.