STORM SURGE.

AuthorMartin, Edward
PositionSTATEWIDE: East

Pembroke Mayor Greg Cummings was on the ground, and Steve Troxler in the air. But as Hurricane Florence's rains pushed Tar Heel rivers to record heights in mid-September, both witnessed the same results in Robeson County, one of dozens of communities ravaged by the storm.

"It was awful in Lumberton to see an area hit so hard by Matthew totally devastated again," says Troxler, N.C. commissioner of agriculture, after a five-and-a-half-hour aerial damage survey. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew dumped more than 15 inches of rain on already-wet ground. "Scary thing is, we don't know what we'll find when the water goes down," he says.

Florence shattered rainfall records, pouring 34 inches in areas such as Swansboro, eclipsing the previous benchmark of 24 inches from Hurricane Floyd in 1999. As of mid-September, Florence had left 37 dead, including 27 in North Carolina and eight in South Carolina. More than 1,000 roads were closed. For days, Wilmington, population almost 120,000, was inaccessible by land.

Days after the storm, Troxler's initial assessment for the state's $84 billion agriculture industry was somber. His first impression, though, was that remedial efforts after Floyd helped. After Floyd, the state paid $20 million to shut down 43 hog farms with more than 100 waste lagoons in flood-prone areas.

But Floyd's $1.1 billion in agricultural damage is likely to be swamped by the wind and rain of Florence. Initial assessments showed 5,500 hogs dead and about 3.4 million turkeys and chickens drowned, double Matthew's toll.

One concern is the open lagoons that can flood and break, dumping waste into rivers and streams. New Bern...

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