Bertha Rips N. Carolina With 105-mph Winds

Hurricane Bertha smacked the Carolina coast Friday like the back of the devil’s hand, hurling its 35-mile eye across Cape Fear, blinding the beachfront with rain and wrecking homes and businesses with 105-mph winds that hurled shards of glass through the streets.

Skies darkened. Trees tumbled onto power lines and plunged thousands of people into a blackout. Riptides and 9-foot breakers crashed into boardwalks. A pleasure boat struck a major bridge and shut it down. One woman died in storm-whipped traffic, and six other people were hurt at Camp LeJeune, a Marine base near the North Carolina shore.

The hurricane churned up the East Coast and turned slightly to the east. At midnight EDT, it was 90 miles southwest of Norfolk, Va., and heading north-northeast at 18 mph. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm coincided with high astronomical tides along the Outer Banks, where North Carolina juts farthest out into the Atlantic Ocean.

The confluence of tides and the most punishing winds that Bertha had to offer, to the east and north of the spooky calm in its eye, would make the Outer Banks particularly hazardous, said Jerry Jarrell, deputy director of the hurricane center. “Twelve feet above mean tide,” Jarrell predicted, “would cover most of the roads on the Outer Banks.”

From there, Jarrell said, Bertha would diminish into a tropical storm, straddle the East Coast and feed on warm ocean water as it rolled north along Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay and then Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. “We see it as a very serious storm going into New England,” he said, “with heavy rains, and gusty winds.”

More than 250,000 residents and vacationers fled the North and South Carolina coasts, but 14,500 others took refuge Thursday night at 50 shelters opened by the Red Cross in both states. The number of the shelter-bound dropped to 7,000 on Friday as Bertha took aim at Cape Fear and spared coastal communities in South Carolina of its most destructive violence.

Blowing at 105 mph, with gusts to 115 mph, Bertha struck straight at seven people who climbed into Old Baldy, the oldest lighthouse in North Carolina, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, said Tony Davis, a paramedic. They could not be reached for a description of the storm, but Davis said that at midafternoon Old Baldy was in the teeth of the hurricane.

Its eye crossed the tip of Cape Fear shortly before 3 p.m. EDT, then passed east of the lighthouse, which stands on Bald Head Island. “They put a generator and stuff up there,” said Davis, who works on the island. “Anyone was welcome to go up.” He said Old Baldy, which has weathered three wars and guided boats for 150 years, withstood Bertha’s assault.

“About 30 people stayed on the island,” Davis said by telephone. “Some stayed at the Fire Department and some at the Town Hall. The eye just went over, and we’re catching the tail end of it now.” The island has an enclave of expensive homes. Davis said most of the damage seemed to be to large trees in their yards, several of which blew down.

During the night, Bertha had seemed to be pulling its punch; its winds dropped to 80 mph. But then it whipped itself back up to 105 mph on Friday morning before it made landfall. From Cape Fear, the eye of the storm swirled north over Kure Beach, a narrow island between the Cape Fear River and the ocean. At least three piers suffered severe damage.

The storm ravaged one house like a wrecking ball. It flung pieces of window glass sideways into the street. As the hurricane drenched the island, it spun off tornadoes far inland. One of them sheared part of the roof on a horse barn in Raleigh, N.C., during a 4-H show. None of the people or horses in the show complex was injured.

As the hurricane swirled farther north to Carolina Beach, it swamped apartments, homes and businesses with water and toppled a Ferris wheel at an amusement center called Jubilee Park. The Ferris wheel crashed into a carousel and smashed several of its wooden horses. As a final insult, the wind blew over a children’s train ride.

By now, Carolina Beach was without power. The blackout hit more than 395,000 people in North and South Carolina. Dollar estimates of damage were unavailable, but officials said much of the harm would be from losses such as those at Jubilee Park, which depends upon tourism. Lost income from vacationers, they said, was costing millions of dollars a day.

John Green, 29, wearing a bandanna and two days of stubble, staggered along the Carolina Beach waterfront, surveying damage at a T-shirt stand and video store. A policeman told him to find shelter. Green ignored the order. Debris hurtled past and palm trees swayed. Green struggled to keep moving. Bertha began spitting rain and flying sand.

Finally, he surrendered and took refuge. “A pretty good wind,” he said, with resignation.

Other die-hards bunkered down in their homes and shops along the Carolina Beach seashore. Authorities had long since forced tourists to leave and closed a bridge to incoming traffic. The only cars were police cruisers patrolling slowly with their emergency lights flashing.

Like Green, these die-hards moved in slow motion, clutching at light poles and fighting to keep their balance.

Nearby, at the Burlington Motel, Melissa Silverwind, 29, tried to prove to her boss that he had made a good decision when he promoted her to motel manager several weeks ago.

With news of the hurricane, her boss had fled for higher ground, but Silverwind was keeping the Burlington open for business, in spite of a power blackout and a gutter pipe that swung dangerously over the front steps in the wind.

She jumped each time she heard a crash. Once it was a garbage can that slammed into a parked car; then it was a piece of roof from a restaurant next door. The hurricane lifted the chunk into the sky, then slammed it down on the ground.

The old wooden motel shook violently.

Bertha howled so ferociously that Silverwind had to struggle to hear emergency reports on a small radio she had set up at the front counter.

“I figure,” she said at one point, “that this old building has been through hurricanes before, and it’s going to fall down now.”

She was wrong. The Burlington stood.

From Carolina Beach, the center of the hurricane brushed passed the city of Wilmington, N.C., population 55,000, where Bill Branch, the manager of a trailer park, said it made his heart beat hard.

Branch said he clutched his chest. “It sounded like a shotgun blast every time a tree fell or the thunder hit,” he said. “I thought we might get wiped out. All it takes is one tree on the roof.”

A neighbor, Eddie Devork, said his house rocked back and forth like a carnival ride during the height of the storm. “I said my prayers,” he declared, “and hung on till it was over. Ain’t much more you can do.”

Wilmington radio stations took telephone calls throughout the day and broadcast reports of dogs, portable toilets and other objects flying through the air.

They also broadcast reports of extensive damage to piers in the Wilmington area.

It was 5 p.m. EDT when Bertha’s evil eye moved over Wrightsville Beach on its way to the Outer Banks.

The wind tore away sizable pieces of condos, motels and beach cottages and homes strung in a strip along the Wrightsville Beach coastline.

Then the hurricane careened through Camp LeJeune, where two of the six people it injured remained hospitalized late Friday. North of the Marine base, the storm knocked down a tree. It fell through a man’s house, trapping him briefly.

Still farther north, before Bertha’s winds blew themselves down to 75 mph--barely above the threshold for a hurricane--the storm ripped a pleasure boat called the Pamlico Queen loose from its moorings in the Pamlico River. The vessel featured romantic rides and fine dining.

It struck a large bridge. Police in nearby Washington, N.C., said they had to close the span to check for damage.

As the hurricane reached the Outer Banks, a woman who ignored warnings to stay inside was killed in a traffic accident at Kitty Hawk, N.C. She was not immediately identified.

Her death was the ninth attributed to the storm. In its path northwest from the Caribbean, Bertha left two people dead in Florida and six others in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and St. Martin.

Although South Carolina was spared the brunt of the storm, its coastline seemed to shudder when Bertha hit.

State Route 17 through North Myrtle Beach was deserted, covered with water. Billboards chattered and groaned. Traffic lights danced like Japanese lanterns. A police cruiser and then a utility truck rolled slowly through pouring rain.

At the Economy Inn, most of the 44 rooms were empty. As the surf pounded just a few blocks away, only 10 guests stayed to brave out the hurricane. The motel made every one of them sign a liability waiver.

Charles Dean of Cartersville, Ga., and his crew of electricians holed up in one of the rooms. When the storm hit, they had been installing a laser-tag emporium in North Myrtle Beach, where amusements abound, ranging from miniature golf courses to T-shirt shops.

At first the Economy Inn would not let them stay. “But then they came over with the consent forms,” Dean said, “and we came back.

“Better to sleep in a bed.”

Dean and his crew filled a cooler with beverages and sported a Confederate flag tagged: “It’s a Southern Thing. Some People Just Don’t Understand.” They lounged in their room with the door open as the rain pounded outside.

“I was in one of these [storms] in Panama City, Fla.,” Dean recalled. But he said Bertha was worse. Panama City, he said, “was nothing like this.”

Night clerk David Buddin, a University of Massachusetts graduate student in music theory, had little to do. He shared the camaraderie in Dean’s room. “I slept right through the evacuation order,” Buddin said. “But I don’t really give a damn.

“Looks like I’ll have a peaceful shift tonight.”

The only other establishment that stayed open was a liquor store. It did a steady business.

“We’re staying here,” said the owner. “It’s safer. Our home is on the beach.”

Lacey reported from Carolina Beach and Bornemeier from North Myrtle Beach. Times researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta, special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami and staff writer Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.