Cleaning up Isabel's mess isn't easy on Outer Banks

KITTY HAWK, N.C. -- The piles of smashed deck steps, refrigerators, soggy carpeting and furniture had already reached prodigious heights at homes along the beach road where John Tice Jr. lives.

As fast as he could work in a scorching midday sun, Tice added to a massive waste pile on the Outer Banks, tossing out large pieces of lumber and about a dozen screen windows that couldn't hold up to Hurricane Isabel's 100 mph winds.

"They told us to put it in the right of way and they would pick it up," said Tice, who lives and works at the same location in hard-hit Kitty Hawk.

The cleanup effort began in nearby areas soon after Isabel hit Sept. 18, but it was just getting underway at the end of this week in Kitty Hawk, where road damage slowed residents' return.

It will take about six months to pick up some kinds of storm debris, such as electrical appliances with potential environmental hazards, from Hatteras Island, said Edward Mann, Dare County's director of public works.

Hatteras Village, on the island's southernmost point, offers distinct challenges because of a 2,000-foot-wide breach in the sand just north of the village that also took out a section of N.C. Highway 12 -- the only road to the rest of the island.

There, Mann's first priority is to move materials such as soaked carpets and furniture away from the population centers. Those items can become a breeding ground for mold and mosquitos, he said.

"We're going to take all the wet, smelly stuff and load it in 40-yard rolloff boxes and take it off the island," he said.

Once they are filled, the boxes will be loaded onto ferries for a four-hour trip across the Pamlico Sound to the Dare County mainland.

County officials are setting up a temporary burn site in Hatteras Village for natural storm debris such as tree limbs, and similar burn sites will be set up at other locations along the Outer Banks, Mann said.

Other items, like roofs and other parts of homes, will be reduced to smaller pieces and trucked off the island when Highway 12 is driveable, Mann said.

On Friday, dump trucks carrying storm waste bounced along the dirt road that leads into the Dare County Construction Landfill, just over the bridge from Manteo on the mainland. A pile of large concrete and asphalt slabs -- most likely chunks of Highway 12 -- resembled a small Stonehenge.

Danny Cooke, 37, dumped a load of wet carpeting and other material from the flooded Sea Ranch Motel in Kill Devil Hills.

"I've been dumping about eight or nine loads a day," Cooke said. "They're working the life out of me."

David Forrer waited his turn in his dwarfed pickup truck, which held an old waterbed, a broken TV, a rusty bicycle and a gas grill damaged beyond repair when the storm drove it into a concrete picnic table.

He admitted the load wasn't all Isabel's fault -- he took the opportunity to clean out his garage, too.

"Right now business is dead, so I decided to clean out some junk," said Forrer, who works at a Nags Head restaurant.