@filipinoservantThe Filipino Servant
[ANC] The first effects of #Hurricane #Irene are being felt in North Carolina in the form of 6- to 9-foot waves:...fb.me/1aZm9HATT
For the past five years, Ray and Matthew Lamb have sold bloodworms and fishing poles at Chasin’ Tails Outdoors, their bait-and-tackle shop in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Today, as Hurricane Irene barrels down, father and son are parting ways.
“I’m not going to stay,” said the elder Lamb, 62, sweating through his gray T-shirt as he boarded the windows of Chasin’ Tails, just across Bogue Sound from his home in Morehead City. He’s splitting tomorrow as his son hunkers down with his wife and baby girl along the coast.
It’s decision time for more than 65 million Americans in Irene’s path. whether it’s securing their homes and fleeing or simply buying flashlight batteries in case electricity fails in New York high rises. Lamb, 32, is taking precautions as he stays close to his home and business.
He’s already sealed the windows of his brick home on Hoop Pole Creek on Atlantic Beach. On one side is the ocean, on the other Bogue Sound, vulnerable to high winds and flooding that can knock out utilities.
“We would stay there, but I don’t have a hookup for a generator and we have a 1-year-old baby,” said Lamb, tracking Irene’s path on a television perched in a corner of Chasin’ Tails. “I don’t want to get trapped over here.”
Moving In
Instead, Lamb and his wife, Stacy, and daughter, Savannah, plan to stay in his in-laws’ home in nearby Cape Carteret, backed up by an emergency generator. He hopes to return to Atlantic Beach as early as Aug. 28 in the event his store, with four freezers, loses electricity. He’s got gasoline-powered generators ready to crank up.
Yesterday, authorities in Carteret County told visitors to leave. They also posted an evacuation order for Bogue Banks, a barrier island with Atlantic Beach, Emerald Isle and other beach towns, starting at 6 a.m. today.
