10/31/2026
Five of the 357 structures on Long Beach were left when Hurricane Hazel was done with it. 🌊
Hazel came ashore on October 15, 1954, near Calabash, right at the North Carolina and South Carolina line, as a Category 4 hurricane. It arrived on the full moon, on the highest lunar tide of the year. The National Weather Service records a surge of up to 18 feet at Calabash. At Long Beach, today's Oak Island, a 17-foot surge swept away 352 of the island's 357 structures. Wilmington measured a 98 mph wind. The weather service estimates Oak Island's winds at 140 mph, an estimate and not a reading. In North Carolina, 19 people died.
Behind those numbers were families like the Carrs. Fourteen-year-old Sam "Butch" Carr and his family had just moved into their new home on Long Beach when the surge forced them out. Mattie Carr's fur stole had been hung on a tree to dry, and looters took it. 🏚️
The Carrs did not walk away. They rebuilt and moved back in 1955. The 357 structures became five, and one family went back anyway.
What would you have carried back to a beach with almost nothing left?
