Hurricane sinks tourism in N.C. village, washes out all but two eateries

Nation's Restaurant News,  Nov 17, 2003  by Jack Hayes

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HATTERAS VILLAGE, N.C. -- When Hurricane Isabel began sending 40-foot waves over the beachfront toward the heart of this quaint barrier island fishing and vacation community seven weeks ago, restaurateurs Jane and John Metacarpa feared for the life of their 5-year-old casual-theme Sandbar & Grille.

The spouse-partners had just paid off a $40,000 summer expansion project and, like their hospitality peers all over Hatteras Island, were looking forward to the big tourist rush that would begin arriving in early December. Hungry tourists were expected to throng the area for the Wright Brothers Centennial Celebration, near Nags Head and Kitty Hawk, N.C., an hour north of Hatteras Village by highway and ferry.

"We've got a couple of walls left standing, and that's it," Jane Metacarpa confirmed this month. "The ocean cut a 2,000-foot-wide breach across the island, and they're saying the road won't be back open until January."

Another of the village's food-service operations, Taste Buds Bakery, was destroyed totally by the wind-driven surf that turned Hatteras Island--home of a famed lighthouse that has guided Atlantic Coast sailors for 133 years--into an off-limits tourist destination. In fact, the three deep inlets gouged when the storm cut across Highway 12 and severed the island in two virtually isolated Hatteras Village, which lies on the island's southern tip.

In Isabel's wake, only two of the village's 11 foodservice venues--Breakwater Restaurant and Austin Creek Grill--remained operational. Others, such as Graveyard Deli, Hatteras Harbor Seafood Deli, Hatterasman Drive-in, Rocco's Pizza & Restaurant and Sonny's--were closed because of storm damage and, more significant, lack of business.

"We were in the middle of our best season since the opening," said Metacarpa. "Then came Sept. 18, and our lives changed drastically."

With tourism now at a standstill in the temporarily isolated community, the only guests now visiting Breakwater's and Austin Creek's dining rooms are the 400 or so emergency workers involved in sand and debris removal, road rebuilding, dredging, demolition and reconstruction since the hurricane.

Metacarpa explained that ferries are running every hour for the locals, but anyone else attempting to reach the community by ferry must show an ID and explain their purpose. Even the village's schoolchildren are being ferried because busses can't operate until the highway becomes usable again.

"I've never seen anything like it; the entire north end of the village is wiped out," said the Breakwater's executive chef, Colby Fairchild, who grew up in Virginia Beach, Va., and knew what hurricanes can do to ocean-side communities.

Local reports have chronicled major storm damage across the entire Outer Banks chain, which stretches nearly 100 miles in North Carolina from the towns of Okracoke Village through seven Hatteras Island communities that include Frisco, Buxton and Rodanth, to the central and northern beach towns of Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, Duck and Corolla.

But Hatteras Village was the hardest-hit point on the barrier islands. The severity of Isabel's blow was called the worst to land on the area since the infamous Ash Wednesday stoma that struck in the 1930s. Hurricane Emily was the last major storm to rock the area in 1993.

Four Hatteras Village hotels that faced the sound, with a combined total of 436 rooms, also were wiped out on Sept. 18. The village, whose main industry beside tourism is fishing, has three hotels remaining as well as a group of rental cottages.

"The next couple of years are going to be extremely hard," said Metacarpa, explaining it will be at least a year before the first rebuilding efforts are visible.

According to Fairchild, the Breakwater is doing a good lunch business, but dinner remains very slow. For the first 10 days after the storm the restaurant fed emergency workers and others at no cost. "'We're basically open to feed the workers and to keep our own staff employed," he said. "The crews have plenty of work to do. There are no sand dunes left. You see whole houses out in the sound. With the isolation, there's a kind of restlessness settling in, and we're calling it "island fever.'"

Adding to the isolation is a sense of growing frustration among such business owners as the Metacarpas, who must now find new property on which to rebuild because their landlord apparently is choosing not to do so.

Jane Metacarpa explained that a clause in their evacuation insurance policy excluded coverage because the property was not repairable. Virtually the whole village, including the Metacarpas and their staff of 11, who have been unemployed since Isabel struck, is out of work.

Metacarpa said she and her husband have been receiving $229 unemployment check each week. They're looking to the Small Business administration for help with loans to begin rebuilding, with estimates of $300,000 for the land, $400,000 to $500,000 for the structure and another $100,000 for furnishings.