The Havoc of Hazel by Cole Dittmer 21 SSixty years ago WPTF radio announcer Carl Goerch broke through the droning hum of a DC-3 airplane as his aircraft crossed the sky into Wrightsville Beach from the north. “We are coming near the bridge and here there is real devastation just east of the bridge, and west of the bridge it is even worse,” Goerch says on a recording from October 16, 1954. “The side porch has been ripped out of the Ocean Terrace and the building has a dangerous tilt to it. Below the Ocean Terrace everything is gone, down to the Carolina Yacht Club, and Lumina pier is gone!” Such was the scene on that Saturday October morning in Wrightsville Beach the day after the storm. Many similar, if not worse, assessments of the damages were seen to the south in Brunswick County, where the Category 4 Hurricane Hazel gouged the southeastern North Carolina coast. Destroyed cottages and Hurricane Hazel damage at the base of the Wrightsville Beach water tower. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAPE FEAR MUSEUM www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
October 2014
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