By STEVE HERRING
News-Argus Staff Writer

MAR MAC — On the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Floyd Wednesday a Neuse River dotted with sandbars and almost shallow enough to walk across bore no semblance to the rain-gorged torrent that forever changed the landscape of this community and led to the formation of a state-certified water rescue unit.

On nearby Bryan Boulevard only three occupied houses remain in the once-thriving subdivision that was wiped out by the floodwaters that followed Floyd. Street signs have been swallowed by vegetation and old side streets have been blocked off.

One of those remaining houses belongs to Arthur and Agnes Chambers, who stayed after Hurricane Fran in 1996 and Floyd in 1999. He recalls that during both storms firefighters went door to door warning people to leave.

The family moved its vehicles to higher ground as Fran threatened. The water rose enough to enter the house, but did not cause much damage, and they used their flood insurance settlement to make repairs and move back in.

“When Floyd came they did the same thing and came by and told us there was going to be flooding,” he said. “Everybody was thinking it would be like Fran, and then the next thing we knew, we could see water. That night there wasn’t hardly any water on the streets, but that morning it was up to the steps so we had to get the cars out of here.

“Then we came back down and started moving things up higher (in the house). They came back and said it was going to be worse than Fran. That water came fast. It came within 10 hours. It came so fast — rising, rising, rising everything we had in here we couldn’t get. It was bad, it was bad. We didn’t know what we were going to do. I never in my life saw anything like that before.

“We have made a decision, if it happens a third time, we are going to leave.”

The predications were correct, the flood was much worse than Fran as floodwaters rose nearly to the eves of houses.

“Within two days everything was under water and you couldn’t see anything over here,” Chambers said. “As far as you could see anything, almost down to where McDonald’s is, everything else was under water. It kind of shocked me. I said, ‘How is it possible that everything here is under water?’ It seemed like it was a dream, but it was real, it was real.

“Neighbors tried to help each other get things out. When the water receded, neighbors were trying to save what they could save, but you could hardly save anything. It was gone. We lost a lot of stuff, things that mean a lot, like photos, that could not be replaced.

“We were broke and we didn’t have any money to get anything to eat. My wife had our Bible. I will never forget it, she had a Bible and she said let me read this Bible. So she opened it and started reading and flipped a page and found three $100 bills she had put inside that she had forgot all about. So we were happy about that. We were tickled to death about that.”

Flood insurance paid for the family to rebuild a second time. But it was about two years before they could move back in and Chambers said he continues to work on the house.

Chambers said that his wife was hesitant to move back into the house they have lived in now for 23 years.

“A lot of people did not have flood insurance, but I did,” he said. “I was one of the lucky ones. The ones back here are the ones who had flood insurance so we able to come back in here. We came back in and stripped every thing down. I got it rewired and lot of things replaced. It took two years to get back in.

“I was kind of scared to move back here. But we like the area, we really like the area and that is the only reason we moved back. When the city offered me to move out we didn’t like the deal. So we decided we would rebuild. There were about 25 or 30 houses on this street, but only three were able to stay.”

He added, “It is peaceful. It is real quiet. That is the main reason we moved here when we got the house — to get away from the city and raise the children away from the drugs and gangs. It was a good decision.

“People are wanting to move back into this area, but the county won’t let them. They won’t let you build anything here. They won’t let you do it.  I have had a lot of people offer to buy it, but I turned them down. I just like the area.

“I think they (county) want this area anyway and probably will come back with another offer later on. If they do that then we might leave.”

Meanwhile, Chambers says he pays attention to weather forecasts.

“I sure do,” he said. “Somebody knocks on the door, I am going to start loading up. Especially if they are going to release water from Raleigh.”

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Mar Mac Fire Chief Bill Harrell, who went on many rescue missions himself, said he could talk for days about the flood, the rescues and the ensuring two weeks. He estimates that volunteers from the Mar Mac and Arrington fire departments and National Guard rescued close to 150 people.

However, three rescues stand out.

An elderly woman who lived just down from the fire station was almost hysterical when she came to the station to tell rescuers that her son was trapped inside her house. She had left the house to go to the grocery store and by the time she returned, the rapidly rising floodwaters prevented her from reaching her house.

The 40-year-old man was mentally handicapped, Harrell said.

Harrell said rescuers had already patrolled the area “hollering” and knocking on houses, but went back to the house.

Once again they knocked and yelled, but no one came to the door. They checked a third time with the same results.

The woman continued to insist her son was in the house. Four days into the flooding, the woman asked for another search. Knocking and yelling still produced no response. This time the rescuers went in and found the man lying in bed. He had put items under his neck to keep his head out of the floodwaters.

The woman said she had told him to stay in bed and remain silent while she was gone.

Harrell recalls another rescue in the Arrington Fire District that involved an elderly woman who refused to leave her house unless her dog was rescued, too.

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“This elderly lady, we were thinking it was a fice or Chihuahua,” Harrell said. “She had a 60-pound chow that had lived with this lady all of his life, and if he hadn’t seen you before then you didn’t belong there.”

The dog bit two of the National Guardsmen helping in the rescue. Harrell said the dog actually bit through a the leg of a wooden chair that was being used to corner it before it was finally subdued.

When they came out, the Guardsmen had tied the dog’s jaws closed, trussed it like a pig and were carrying it on a pole between them.

“Things have changed since then,” Harrell said. “We were just trying to get the people out. We weren’t really set up to get the animals. Although, we did get a few dogs here and there. That was something that we didn’t think about back then, but for some people pets are like children.”

Now, the department can set up a make-shift short-term kennel for rescued pets, he said.

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The third rescue involved fording a flooded Ash Street at Stoney Creek Park and jumping trees on New Hope Road.

It was about 2 a.m. when Harrell and the National Guardsmen driving a five-ton truck were dispatched to Nu-Life after reports of flooding were received. The truck was traveling east on Ash Street when it approached the Stoney Creek Park area — a river of water was rushing across the road.

Harrell said he wasn’t sure whether even the large truck could make it safely across. He asked the driver, who told him the truck was made to float.

“I told him what good was that if we were floating away who was going to come and help us,” Harrell said.

They decided to give it a try, and Harrell said he could feel the heavy truck being pushed by the water.

After reaching Nu-Life, Harrell found there was no flooding. It was just raining so hard that a small brick wall was preventing the water from draining away and it was backing up into the building.

As they were leaving they received a call concerning an injured person in the Belfast community. The man, who was in shock, was loaded into the back of the truck along with rescue volunteers for the trip to Wayne Memorial Hospital.

Traveling down New Hope Road they were forced to stop because of a tree across the road. Again, Harrell asked the driver what he thought. The drive responded that Harrell was the boss and that he would do whatever Harrell instructed — to which Harrell said to jump it.

So the driver backed the truck up, took off and jumped the tree, and further down the road two more.

They arrived at the hospital and unloaded the patient when another call came in.

“There are trees down,” Harrell said one man said.

One of the volunteers who had been riding in the back of the truck responded, “We jumped one time before, we can jump them again.”

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For the most part, the businesses in the Mar Mac area that were damaged in the storm have rebuilt and remain in operation today.

But he estimates that close to 250 residences were lost to the storm.

“Some just moved further up the road,” he said.

One man who had a mobile home in a nearby mobile home court asked Harrell how bad the flooding was expected to be. Harrell told him and later during the day, Harrell said he looked up and the man had hooked his trailer up and leaving the area.

It wasn’t the first time the area flooded — it had been under water in the mid-1960s and then again in 1996 because of Fran. The older residents remembered those earlier floods and responded quickly to evacuation appeals, he said.

However, some of the newer residents “didn’t believe it was going to be as bad as they were being told,” he said.

One person asked Harrell what he would do.

“I said, ‘I’d get out,’” Harrell said.

Harrell realized just how severe Floyd’s potential was when Wayne County Emergency Service Director Joe Gurley handed him a report from a hydrologist that predicted the river would crest more than two and one-half feet higher than it did with Fran. Harrell was worried that the prediction, as it had been for Fran, was too low.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my Lord, nothing is going to be left out there,’” he said. “I told Joe to forget the hurricane, we had to be ready for the flood. It would have been worse if we had not gotten that report.

“Joe knew it was going to be terrible, too.”

Harrell quickly set about getting his crews in place and securing more chainsaws, generators, coolers and food.

He also realized the department’s small Jon boats would not be sufficient for what was ahead, and arrangements were made to borrow a 22-foot flat-bottom boat.

The community was “great” in its support during that time, he said.

As the floodwaters rose, management of the Winn-Dixie asked if National Guard could help elevate products to higher shelves. The Guard agreed to help. But when the power went out, the grocery store was left with no way to keep meats and other items cold.

Harrell received a call from the National Guard asking about coolers. Harrell said he was shocked when he was told a five-ton truck had been filled with food.

He knew there weren’t nearly enough coolers to handle that amount of food, so he called a friend who later showed up and lined a fire station bay with open-faced freezers to store all of the food. Area residents also cooked and brought food to the volunteers and Guardsmen at the fire station.

“It (flood) was bad, but we had such good folks working together,” he said.

Lessons learned from Fran helped as well.

However, it is the lessons learned from Floyd that have not only better prepared the county to deal with future disasters, but placed it among the leading water and land rescue teams in the state, he said.

The Arr-Mac (short for Arrington Mar Mac) Water Rescue Team was formed as the result of Floyd. Its members are trained and state certified in flood and swift water rescues. It has branched out to include land search and rescue as well.

The more it can hone those skills, the quicker and better prepared its members will be, Harrell said.

It also works with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office dive team.

Much money, he said, has been spent on equipment and training. While they have not been utilized that much in the county, the team has traveled statewide helping with rescues.

“We are just like the Boy Scouts,” he said. “We are ready to go. We just have to stop by the grocery store and get some food.”

Harrell said the volunteers had not really been trained to handle Floyd’s flood.

“I stood in water chest deep for four days in a row,” he said. “Between us, Arrington and the National Guard, I don’t know of anyone who got sick. There is no telling what was in that water.

“Now when we go on a mission we do all we can to get the job done without getting in the water. If you can do it from the shore that is the best way to do it. Now we have specialized suits. Back then we did it and did not know what was in the water. It is the best money we have spent.”

Also, when the department’s new station was built, it was designed to act as an auxiliary emergency management site complete with beds, a generator to power the entire building and computer networking.

“We did a lot of stuff when we built this to be prepared for the next natural disaster,” Harrell said. “I think it has been money well spent.”