One year ago today, Scotland County residents were awaiting the expected arrival of Hurricane Florence, a Category 1 storm that wasn’t as fearsome because of its wind and rain so much as the fact that it was one of the slowest-moving hurricanes in recent history.

Florence arrived in Scotland County within 24 hours of pushing into the Wilmington area on a journey that left severe ruination in New Hanover County and swamped Robeson County.

Despite all the warnings and preparation, Scotland County was still at the mercy of a storm that all but parked overhead and sent relentless wind and rain throughout the county. In its wake, Florence created an array of damaged homes, flooded property and croplands, buckled roadways, washed-out bridges, closed schools, damaged buildings and schools, closed interstate highways and left devastation.

But Scotland County went to work as quickly as possible.

Over the year since, the healing and recovery have been amazing, though there remains a lot yet to be done.

The Laurinburg Exchange staff spent the past few days looking into where things stand within the county after Hurricane Florence’s extended visit in September 2018.

Here’s what we found …

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In the county

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“The vast majority of community is fully recovered,” said County Manager Kevin Patterson. “If you drive around, there are still blue tarps on roofs and, if you are the person who hasn’t recovered yet, it feels like there has been no recovery at all. So, even though the vast majority is back to normal, there are still people suffering one way or another because of it.

“Because Florence was a historical event for us, originally, there was a lot to learn,” he added. “The resilience and assets from the community as a whole was impressive.

Patterson said there were a lot of people reaching out in ways that no one expected. All the donated items had to be distributed and the organizations came together to distribute those donations in the community.

“The community organizations that stepped out, learning how to give out baby supplies, cleaning supplies, supplies that were coming from around the country — the large humanitarian outreach still had to be managed, (but) those community organizations got the supplies to people who needed it,” he said.

But Patterson acknowledged there was still work to be done around the county.

“We’re still working on finding additional ways to mitigate potential future problems,” said Patterson, “We are working with the state and federal governments on problems like the watershed program, and we’re trying to make sure we’re building redundancy and mitigate future threats (like Hurricane Dorian).”

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In the city

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The Main Street business district was completely flooded and a downtown historic building fell into the street before the worst of the storm even hit; a sink-hole opened up in front of Lloyd’s barber shop and damaged the building; not to mention power outages and other issues Florence left behind.

“Our entire water system was drained, and moving around was almost impossible because both city and state roads were washed out,” said City Manager Charles Nichols. “Recovery took a large amount of time and overtime from our team in order to get the city back to normal.”

The city applied for $1.4 million in FEMA reimbursement and, despite the event hitting the one-year mark, only $27,000 has so far been received. But recovery has been nonstop.

“We’ve completely recovered with the exception of the North Fire Station discussions and not knowing when we’ll be reimbursed,” Nichols said.

While much of the city flooded, the council has been in discussions with an engineering group to learn the best options to fix the infrastructure in the city and will be coming to the October City Council meeting to give the final presentation.

In the year since the storm, the Market Furniture building, which fell both into the street and onto the building next to it, has been cleaned up — leaving an empty slot at the end of downtown. The building it fell on is in the process of being renovated for future use, and Lloyd’s Barber Shop, which was heavily damaged in the storm, has since been demolished.

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Habitat for Humanity

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Chris Carpenter, executive director with Habitat for Humanity of Scotland County, has seen firsthand the devastation from Florence — as well as how much remains to be done for residential property.

In addition, the storm also played havoc with the constructions of Habitat’s 49th home.

“We had just begun developing the lot and were preparing to dig the foundation for this house the week the storm hit,” Carpenter said. “The rains from the hurricane and the continued rains we received over the fall and winter completely shut down construction.”

The home finally got back underway, at an additional cost to redo the lot, and is scheduled to open this month.

There were other ripple effects, too.

“The storm has created so many projects for Habitat,” Carpenter explained. “We believe we will complete 140 to 150 total disaster projects by the time we finally run out of money. The impact on the families is enormous.

“We have also spent around $270,000 to date on these projects and it has really enhanced the look of the community,” he added.

One of the positives Carpenter can hang his Habitat hat on is the Roof Repair Ministry created in 2018.

“It was the first time we would do something in the county other than building houses,” he said. “We felt it would be a great way to help more people. We never realized how much the program would be needed. We have come a long way very quickly to keep up with the demand and we are very thankful for the people and other organizations who have stepped up to help us get this work done.”

But projects still remain after Florence.

“We still need help spreading the word that we have this program (because) there are so many homeowners who have not applied,” Carpenter said. “I don’t want one person to miss out if we can help them.”

In response to the needs left by the storm, Habitat has — with the help of grants — been able to lead the way with recovery for residents.

”I feel like Habitat has been a tremendous force in the recovery process,” Carpenter said. “There are 76 homeowners who have better homes than they had after the storm and even before. We will have brought more the $600,000 into Scotland County by the time we are finished.

“The work we are doing is not easily noticed,” he added. “It is easy to see flood waters and extreme wind damage after a storm like Florence. We were able to identify a segment of the population that usually would have been missed and find a way to help them.”

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In the public schools

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The Scotland County School District is still in recovery mode — but not in a physical way. According to Superintendent Ron Hargrave, students are still displaced due to the damage from the storm, but many students and staff continue to suffer emotional and mental health effects.

“When we did return to school, for those first few days our primary goal was to provide emotional and mental health support to our students and staff that had been affected,” Hargrave said. “In preparation for the support that our students would need when they returned to school, we had training for our staff to make them aware of some of the signs to look for and how to help those students traumatized by the hurricane and its ongoing after-effects.”

He added that the district will be in the “emotional recovery mode” for a while, but will continue to offer support students and staff.

“Just like when Hurricane Dorian was forecasted to affect our area, many of our students were concerned and genuinely fearful that this storm would be a repeat to last year,” Hargrave said. “It’s difficult to concentrate in class when the memory of the devastation from last year is still so fresh in their minds.”

Besides the emotional and mental health effects, Hargrave said the biggest impact from the storm was the district closing school for 12 days. Still, during those 12 days, the schools opened up cafeterias to serve breakfast and lunch daily to provide students that were dependant on school meals an opportunity to get food.

“Unlike many districts to the east of us, our district was fortunate to be spared extensive damage to our schools and district offices,” Hargrave said. “However, we did have significant flooding and water damage at the high school and several other of our schools were affected as well.”

There was flooding and water damage at the new gym, CTE building, auditorium and art classrooms in the high school, water damage at at Laurel Hill Elementary, South Scotland Elementary and Wagram Elementary while Shaw Academy, Carver Middle School, Spring Hill Middle School, North Laurinburg Elementary and I. Ellis Johnson suffered roof leaks.

Scotland Early College lost instructional material and its classrooms when St. Andrews University was flooded and was moved to North Laurinburg, and many bus routes had to be re-routed because of damage and standing water on the roads.

In the year since the storm, the district has not received any money from FEMA — but federal officials have told the district that it is being worked on.

“We still are unsure what will be covered by FEMA or when we can expect any reimbursements,” Hargrave said. “Of course, the repairs had to be made so the funding to do that came out of local funds. Once we receive the reimbursements from FEMA, those local funds used can be replaced.”

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St. Andrews University

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St. Andrews University continues its process of recovering from the effects of Hurricane Florence and has been approved for a reimbursement of about $2.3 million by FEMA to restore the campus facilities damaged.

“(FEMA) is currently working with the North Carolina Emergency Management Department to make some fundable decisions to bring the school back into the position it started with before the storm,” said Paul Baldasare Jr., president of St. Andrews University.

Baldasare added that FEMA would handle 75% of the funding and NCEM will handle the remaining 25%.

The university’s residence hall buildings like Mecklenburg Hall and Vardell Hall were affected severely from flooding. Mecklenburg Hall is currently not accessible and Vardell Hall is currently in the middle of renovation.

William Henry Belk Center, the university’s student center, is currently not accessible on the first floor, but faculty and staff members have been able to access the second floor. The iconic bell tower will undergo demolition because of the damage and will be rebuilt.

Some of the academic buildings, along with some of the faculty and staff offices, were also affected by flooding and moved into other accessible facilities.

Although the repairs for the severe damages are still in progress, according to Baldadare, there was an increase in enrollment, student athletes were back on the field or court, and the university still had enough housing spaces for students to live in on campus.

“We had an increase this fall, versus last fall, so we’re making progress,” he said, adding that St. Andrews University’s goal is to continue to recover during the renovation process.

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Scotland County hascome a long way sinceHurricane Florence