Some background info. Not a defense of FEMA at the time, since the agency isn't mentioned.
http://www.rescue3.com/articles08.htmlThe first rescues began Thursday afternoon. A Marine helicopter hoisted up a couple of drivers from a flooded 18-wheeler on I95 in Nash County. The state's helicopter resources were pretty much limited to two hoist-equipped National Guard Blackhawks, both of which were down for maintenance.
As darkness fell on Thursday, everything still seemed manageable.
About eleven o'clock the terror began. The water, already high, kept rising and didn't stop. People began getting out as best they could in the darkness. Some evacuation orders were issued, but by now the roads were flooded. The county EOCs, already overburdened, were now overwhelmed by calls. They called for outside help.
The state sent military helicopters. But the helicopters, with military radios, could not talk to civilian agencies, who in many cases had little idea of what was going on outside their immediate areas. Only a few were able to operate at night. The pilots did the best they could, rescuing whoever they found.
They could rescue only a few. Mostly people rescued themselves and their neighbors. One citizen rescue boat overturned and six people, three of them children, drowned. By daylight an estimated 1,500 people were trapped by the still-rising waters. Belatedly the state began mobilizing.
Friday morning everything that could fly was sent to the flood zone. At one point there were sixty helicopters from the active Army, North Carolina and Tennessee National Guard, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard deployed in Pitt and Edgecombe counties. The Coast Guard had to use an airborne controller to direct them all. The governor appealed for private helicopters.About 420 people were rescued by helicopters and many more evacuated. Rescuers in boats accounted for another thousand or so. Swiftwater rescue teams in the west were finally activated, although it would be Saturday before they would arrive.
Some 4,000 national guardsmen and over 750 other uniformed personnel were sent in, although most had no flood rescue training or life jackets. Two Guardsmen narrowly escaped when their truck washed away, and two state Department of Transporation workers died, one while assisting in a rescue. Over 1,400 roads were flooded, making it difficult to get anyone or anything in except by air.
Citizens continued to die while driving through moving water. When the death toll was tallied this would be the leading cause. There was no public education program telling them not to, nor were roads closed off, even major ones. Carlan Gordon's experience was typical.
Gordon, a student at UNC Wilmington, had gone to Raleigh early Wednesday to stay with her brother. She drove back Friday. No one on radio or TV was saying anything about closed or flooded roads. When she reached Wallace, about forty miles from Wilmington, the road was blocked by water. Gordon pulled up to the Department of Transportation worker who was waving people through.
"Is this safe?" she asked.
"Everyone so far has made it," the man replied.
The water came up to the doors of her Chevy Cavalier, but finally the car reached a high spot. Beyond the water was flowing swiftly, and a rescue was in progress where a minivan had washed off the road (the driver drowned). Eventually Gordon was rescued by the highway patrol, who ran a large dump truck in that night to pick up her and several other stranded motorists.
The rivers continued to rise, as predicted, until early the next week. By late Saturday, September 18th, three days after the storm, everyone had been rescued, even though some towns remained cut off by flood waters. The state began turning its attention to the massive problem of flood relief.
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