‘It’s like a ghost town’ in Nags Head as the few who remain await Hurricane Dorian
A little less than two days before the expected arrival of Hurricane Dorian, this oceanfront town in the northern Outer Banks waited in quiet anticipation, its empty streets and beaches foreboding scenes of apprehension.
Days earlier, the final large crowds of summer filled restaurants, shops, putt-putt courses. But now, with Labor Day two days in the past and the threat of Dorian forcing mandatory evacuations throughout the Outer Banks, “It’s like a ghost town here,” said Ryan Oliver, a Nags Head resident.
Oliver, 34, wore a sleeveless shirt and beads of sweat on Wednesday, a little before noon. He directed a staff of workers who’d arrived around 9 a.m. at the Outer Banks Fishing Pier. They’d come to help board up Fish Heads, a popular restaurant and bar built into the beginning of the pier.
Down below, the ocean had grown rougher, the waves larger. Red flags blew in a stiff breeze, warning people to stay out of the water — not that there were many on the beach. On the pier, near the restaurant, the sounds of nail guns, saws and drills blended in with the sounds of seagulls and the surf.
In the Outer Banks, hurricane preparations are a ritual, a way of life. The storms bring the threat of destruction and here, especially, of permanent change — of washed-away roads and inlets carved into places that used to be land.
On Wednesday, the threat of Dorian brought an eerie quiet. Even one of the main grocery stores in Nags Head, a big Food Lion a few blocks from the beach, was absent the kind of rush that storm preparation might bring elsewhere, farther inland. There were no crowds, but plenty of milk, bread and water. Outside, customers traded jokes about stocking up on beer.
The memory of Isabel
Oliver’s father has owned the Outer Banks Fishing Pier since 1970, he said, and they opened the restaurant and bar there in 2010. In 2003, Hurricane Isabel left its mark, and memory, by blowing away two revered fishing piers in Nags Head.
The pier that Oliver’s father owns lost about 400 feet, Oliver said. He pointed in the distance to where it used to stretch out farther into the ocean. Two miles north, Hurricane Isabel destroyed about 500 feet of Jennette’s Pier.
“And then they ended up building back Jennette’s as a concrete pier,” Oliver said. “But since we just got beach nourishment, we’re feeling a lot better. And then this last fall, we replaced nine pilings on the pier. So we’re feeling a little bit better about us, structure-wise.”
Isabel struck the Outer Banks in 2003 as a Category 2 hurricane. It was, Oliver said, the only hurricane he could remember in which his property had “any major, major damage.” And so perhaps that was part of the reason for the almost jovial scene while his staff boarded up Fish Heads on Wednesday.
While the workers sawed wood and attached boards to the side of the building, others stood by and watched and cracked open bottles of Corona. They talked about the gatherings they planned in the coming days, and what they’d do while they waited for whatever might come to pass over them.
“With a lot of the younger people, you know, we’ve seen in the last few years that we haven’t had anything major, minus flooding, so people tend to take it pretty lightly,” Oliver said. “The hurricane party is what everybody thinks is going to happen. But it’s really not that.
“We spent a lot of time boarding up. Everybody gets their houses ready, everybody’s prepared, and then at the end if you want to sit down and have a cocktail, it definitely happens for sure.”
A familiar routine
They’ve boarded up Fish Heads so often that for some it’d become routine. The letters spray-painted on the wood offered guidance of where to place them: “E” for on the east side of the restaurant, facing the ocean, and “S” for the south.
If all went well, they’d be back on Saturday to take the boards off and re-open. But that was three days away, and there was no way to know what Dorian might bring — whether it might just brush this part of the Outer Banks or whether this area might sustain more serious damage.
When the final board on the restaurant went up, one of the waiters, Johnathon Bland, took a can of red spray paint and began leaving a mark: “2019,” he wrote across the wood, in large numbers. And then, underneath: “DORIAN.”
Nags Heard town officials on Wednesday handed out fliers to people who remained on the island. They were titled “If You Choose to Stay During Hurricane Dorian,” and they came with warnings. Among them:
“At the least, we are expecting significant soundside storm surge, rainfall, high surf and the damage associated with these impacts.”
The town wrote that at the height of the storm, public safety personnel “may not be able to respond in the event of an emergency.” It warned people who stayed to be prepared to lose power and water, and advised gathering enough supplies to last for at least three days.
Some of the locals, the ones who hadn’t yet left and might not, traded information about what was open and what wasn’t. The Food Lion was closing early. Wal-Mart, too. Word was 7-11 would be open so long as it had power.
All around, it was mostly quiet. Stores in strip malls were dark, the parking lots empty. Bridges remained open, for now.
The ice cream shops and beach-branded knickknack stores, perhaps bustling days earlier during a holiday weekend, stood deserted. At the Jurassic Putt, a dinosaur-themed miniature golf course off S. Croatan Highway, the green Tyrannosaurus Rex out front lorded over a desolate landscape.
This story was originally published September 4, 2019 at 4:56 PM with the headline "‘It’s like a ghost town’ in Nags Head as the few who remain await Hurricane Dorian."