Farm family loses crops, home in flood
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 17, 2016 11:05 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Wayne Mitchell walks onto the porch of his home that was flooded during Hurricane Matthew. Water from flash floods reached around a foot in his home.
Wayne Mitchell stands on the furled and creaking floorboards of the house that built him.
His feet are planted firmly on the wood that is now curling up toward the sky at its edges.
The carpet has been ripped out of the house; the wood pulled up, too.
Fans roar throughout the house, working hard to dry the remaining portions soaked by flood waters.
This home belongs to his father, Luby "Charlie" Mitchell, and sits just off of Lassiter Road in the Neuse Islands.
His father moved in 49 years ago, Wayne said, and Hurricane Matthew and its subsequent flooding is threatening to cost the family everything it has.
"This is bad," Wayne said, choking back tears as he stands in the front room of the house, bringing his hands to his face to dry the tears.
He pauses a long time before speaking again.
"My family don't ask for a lot," Wayne said. "We have always worked hard for what we got. We didn't have a lot, but it was ours."
The tears are coming down his face more freely now, but his voice does not shake.
His own house, just across the path from his father's, is damaged far worse than the one he grew up in. Water is still standing several feet high in the backyard.
All the crops the family has toiled over all season that weren't harvested before the hurricane hit are now gone.
Wayne said he is likely facing a loss of $100,000 to $200,000.
As the two houses stand right now, the Mitchell family cannot return home.
"It's just overwhelming not to be able to come home at the end of the day and kick your feet up," Wayne said. "We can't come back until all of this is fixed. I don't know what to do. It's hard to make a decision, and I don't know what direction to take."
Wayne said he planted a stick in the back yard as the hurricane blew in and the rains came down, and watched the water rise up the stick 2 inches in one hour.
"We had to get out as fast as we could," Wayne said. "We put everything up as high as we could and left."
Water coats the floor of Wayne's house, and leaves a thick, silt-like coating of various muck washed up by the flooding into the house.
The water line on the wall is up to his knees, standing at nearly 3 feet.
This is the second time Wayne has lost his home to a hurricane and the subsequent flooding.
When Hurricane Fran hit in 1996, Wayne lost it all and had to rebuild again.
"It's terrible. It's just terrible, you know? And how do you prevent it?" Wayne said. "This is home."
He never thought he would be facing this catastrophe again.
"When I built this house the surveyor put a nail in a post in the back yard and told me that was the 500-year-flood mark, and that I would never see water come that high in my lifetime," Wayne said. "So when we built this house, I told them I want it built one cinderblock higher than that flood line, and it still got me this time."
The story is similar for other residents who live farther down Lassiter Road near Old Smithfield Road, and many are considering taking FEMA buyouts if they are offered.
Ricky Powell, who lives a mile and two-tenths down a gravel path that shoots off Lassiter Road, said his home remains completely submerged in the flood water.
"They had to rescue us out of there on a boat," Powell said. "I don't think you can even get back there right now."
Powell said his family, like the Mitchells, are certain they have lost everything to the flooding.
"We got two vehicles and a house back there," Powell said. "If FEMA offers me a buyout, depending on what they offer me I'll probably take it."
But Wayne said neither he nor his father plan to take a FEMA buyout if it is offered. Instead, they plan to stay and rebuild on the land they have called home, for nearly 50 years.
"My dad's 72, my mama's 63, and I can't leave them back here by themselves. He's not going nowhere," Wayne said. "We'll rebuild. I've been here all my life. A lot of people say to just pick up and move and leave. We've got hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment sitting here, and there's nobody here to look after it. It's just hard to do. You don't just leave."