Adams Creek residents recall Isabel

As Shelton Phillips watches the sky today, it isn't so much tropical storm Hanna that's on his mind.

He's preparing for it, sure.

His 17-foot runabout is out of the water and sitting under a shelter by his back door. His tools are all stowed high in his shop, not scattered on the floor to blow away or bang around.

And his backup gas stove is at the ready.

"We usually use electric, but we don't want to do without," he says.

But as he double checks his batteries and flashlights, he says it's a memory that makes him do it - a memory of Hurricane Isabel.

"All you could see was water," he said. "Well, you could see some trailers, and you knew they were supposed to be on some land, but you had to take it on faith that they were. All you could see all around was water and trees - and you didn't know when it would end."

It was five years ago this month that Hurricane Isabel pounded eastern North Carolina as a Category 3 storm. And Phillips' neighborhood on Adams Creek Road was in its path.

He grew up in Bridgeton, so he's used to hurricanes, but Isabel packed a punch he didn't expect to feel.

"My house here is two feet above the creek, and it come up to my back door," Phillips said. "And by then, there was no leaving."

County Commissioner Theron McCabe lives outside Havelock and represents the area. And he's been on a mission since Hurricane Isabel to get the Adams Creek Bridge raised.

"It needs to be raised at least three feet," he said. "In that neighborhood, it's the one way in - and the one way out. But when the water gets high enough, out isn't an option."

That reality weighs on McCabe, a retired police officer and a volunteer firefighter with Harlowe Volunteer Fire Department, which served some of Isabel's victims.

"I can easily think of 25 families that got it," he said. "Of course, there were more than that."

McCabe has petitioned the state Department of Transportation to raise the bridge.

"I tell you what: When you see things like we saw with Isabel, it sticks with you," he said.

That's why Phillips is ready with his generator, even though he thinks Hanna won't be the kind of storm that people will say much about five years from now.

"I really don't think we'll get the brunt of it," he said. "The weatherman seems to think we won't, but then, the weatherman don't always hit it. The only thing I know to do is to remember what we have seen - and try to be prepared."