Hurricane Bonnie Visits the Duke University Marine Laboratory

Message from Dr. Michael Orbach, Lab Director
Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1998

Between Wednesday morning, August 26th, and Thursday afternoon, August 27, Hurricane Bonnie held forth on and around the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC. Although we often find vigorous weather stimulating around here, a particularly annoying incident involved a waterspout (tornado filled with water) on Wednesday afternoon that destroyed one of our dormitories and threw parts of its roof into the library/auditorium and our major laboratory/office building (Bookhout/Lab7). We are now cleaning up and beginning the reconstruction process; luckily, no one was injured and enough of our capability is intact to be able to begin our fall semester just one week late. Many of our fall courses will include treatment of the genesis and effects of cyclonic storms.

The primary damage was to dorm 4 (the one on the other side of the parking lot from the library), which was completely destroyed; the library, which lost two large window/wall sections on the parking lot side that remained open through the storm; and the auditorium roof, whose rubberized canvass skin was holed (old nautical term) in several places and allowed water to enter the auditorium. Two windows in the Bookhout building, … both on the southwest corner, were also taken out by debris and had water damage. Other than these locations, the rest of the lab sustained only light damage; shingles, signs and a window here and there. There are the requisite boats leaning against the bulkhead, having broken their moorings in Beaufort harbor, but with minimal damage (at least to the bulkhead; one boat had the tide rising and falling inside the boat - a bad sign!).

As a result of the tremendous level of effort and commitment here at the lab, in Durham and in the broader communities both here and there we have come through this ordeal in fairly good order. We are ready to accept students for the fall term as of this weekend, and virtually all of our facilities except for dorm 4 and the library, which is well on the road to recovery, are back in operation. Both during and since the storm the faculty, students and staff have been exquisite in giving of their effort and expertise. I would like to particularly thank Don and Dianne Gagnon, Dan Rittschof and Tim Boynton, with whom I worked on the island during the storm itself to triage the emergency systems; Howard Weckerle, Bill Hunnings, Quentin Lewis and Cindy Adams and their staffs who have put the island back together in such short order; the students, who mounted a major effort to clean up the library and auditorium; and all of those from Durham who have disrupted their own lives and work to help us in this time of need. We will in fact use this opportunity to move on to more focused planning and development of the lab facilities and programs.

Thank you to all of those who have helped and expressed offers of concern and support for us over this past week, and we look forward to seeing you in Beaufort in the near future.

Mike Orbach

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