By Connie Leinbach
The North Carolina Department of Transportation at 5 p.m. Friday reopened N.C.12 on the north end of Ocracoke and resumed service on the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry.
Jamie Kritzer, assistant director of communications for NCDOT, explained in an email that the DOT has installed temporary traffic signals at the area where not enough sandbags are holding back the ocean. These signals direct traffic onto one lane along the sound side.
“Folks need to drive carefully, as conditions can change,” Kritzer said.
The recent storms coupled with a king tide from April 8 to 10 contributed to the severe overwash in which some travelers were saying that it wasn’t just water on the road, but that water was breaking at their tires and coming up to their floorboards.
Additional ocean overwash is possible and is most likely an hour or two before and after high tides.
High tides on Saturday (April 13) will be at 12:30 a.m. and 12:59 p.m. On Monday (April 14), high tides will be at 1:31 a.m. and 12:59 p.m.
In addition, an alert issued Friday by the National Weather Service forecast strong thunderstorms from 9:12 p.m. to 10 p.m. with wind gusts of 50 to 55 mph. The forecast for Saturday calls for sunshine and calmer winds.
As a result of Thursday’s storm, the road sustained pavement damage and experienced significant enough sand and overwash for NCDOT to close the road Thursday night from the pony pens to the ferry terminal and suspended ferry service, Kritzer said. Crews worked all day Friday to remove enough sand to make the road passable for one lane of traffic.
NCDOT expects its contractor to begin placing sandbags along N.C. 12 on Monday, Kritzer said. Pavement repairs will begin when a sufficient number of sandbags are in place to protect the road.
“This winter’s bad weather did significantly more damage to the sandbags,” Kritzer said. “As a result, NCDOT must use additional sand from the surf zone to fill 800 more sandbags and that requires our agency to modify our existing environmental permits before we can move forward with this project.”
Kritzer said NCDOT will continue to monitor and close N.C. 12 as conditions dictate.
He said NCDOT welcomes all suggestions from Ocracoke citizens and other stakeholders as we work to keep N.C. 12 open and provide sufficient ferry service.
As a long time visiter at Ocracoke Island. It’s sad to see so many wash-outs lately at the north end of the island. I wish there was some type of permanent fix to the situation. Not sure how long the breach is from the ocean. i am going to throw in my two cents worth of ideas and suggesting maybe water proof sand filled shipping containers or a large rubberized tube filled with water stretched across the breached area. I really appreciate all the hard work that has been done to keep the area cleared and repaired.
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