As light rain fell Saturday morning, a quartet of men in white disposable coveralls shoveled wet insulation into trash bags outside of homes in Carrboro’s Weatherhill Pointe. The group carried the debris torn out by either last month’s floods or the ensuing restoration work to a nearby trailer, tossing it onto a tall stack of bags set to be hauled out of the community.
A group of volunteers, including Weatherhill Pointe HOA President Lars Knapp (second from right), Carrboro Fire Chief Will Potter (far left) and Carrboro Town Councilor Jason Merrill (far right) pack up insulation from flooded homes on Saturday, August 2. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Just down the road, an even bigger group of people teamed up to dig out mulch from the community playground. The equipment sits near Weatherhill Pointe’s mailboxes – with its announcement board six feet off the ground still showing a molded water line of how high Tropical Depression Chantal’s floodwaters reached the night of July 6.
Lars Knapp, the area’s HOA President, said the goal of the group’s shoveling was to remove contaminated dirt and any dangerous items hidden underneath.
“By the morning on July 7, the water had retreated from the playground,” he said. “All of the mulch had been very disrupted and there [were] chairs and debris and things that had collected in the playground area.”
Weatherhill Pointe was one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by Morgan Creek’s floodwaters during Chantal, with 45 homes suffering water damage. As the region approaches nearly a month since the big storm, residents are still working to dig out and clean up parts of their community — with Knapp asking the public to come help with Saturday’s cleanup.
Knapp envisioned the event as a drop-in opportunity for volunteers to help with “mini projects” around Weatherhill Pointe. Instead, most of the group of 32 people – which was mix of residents and other community members – stayed for the duration to complete tasks. The main goal, according to Knapp, was to remove small debris left behind from the bigger cleaning efforts of recent weeks that could create hazards – like nails, glass, sharp pieces of wood, or housing materials not yet gathered.
“Thankfully, we’ve had Carrboro Public Works out here every single day since a couple days after the flood, despite the impact they had [from the storm], and they’ve been gobbling up debris,” the HOA president said. “We have been fortunate to remove about 98% of the debris and today was about that last 2% that was scattered throughout the neighborhood.”
Volunteer Robert Bradford steps out of the Weatherhill Pointe playground after shoveling mulch and dirt out with other volunteers. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
The community message board, which sits above the neighborhood’s mailboxes, is the clearest place demonstrating how high the water rose during the July 6 storm. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Chapel Hill resident Taelor Wright came to the cleanup in part to support Knapp, who she’s friends with. But Wright said that being able to work hard – treating the unearthing of debris almost like an archaeological dig – was a good feeling, especially knowing how much Weatherhill Pointe needs help.
“I guess what’s going through my head is a bit of sadness with how much devastation there’s been and how many people have been uplifted from their homes that they’ve owned for years and years,” she said. “But then, there’s a little hope in there too – because so many people came out just today and we’ve already made so much progress. Even the area we [cleaned], it looks 85% better with just a couple hours of work.”
Robert Bradford said he and his wife find something to do each day to clean up areas around their home, which sits not far from Weatherhill Pointe’s pond but escaped having any flood damage. He said they treat the recovery tasks as both exercise and sweat equity, aiming to help their peers however possible. Bradford said seeing a few dozen other people take that same approach on Saturday was encouraging, describing it as prime example of community spirit.
“It’s a way of trying to create order out of chaos,” he described. “This flood creates chaos in this neighborhood, how do we – bit by bit – create order? And there’s a physical advantage to that, but there’s also a psychological advantage to that. When people get out and walk the neighborhood, it looks a little better, [there’s] slight improvement day by day… that’s what this is about. That’s what we’re seeing with our neighbors, that’s what we’re seeing with friends and family who come here to help out.”
The Weatherhill Pointe neighborhood, which is not far off Highway 54 in Carrboro, was primarily built in the 1980s and 1990s. Residents said flooding from Tropical Depression Chantal was the first time to their knowledge the neighborhood ever suffered flood damage this extensive. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
After finishing some of her other tasks, Weatherhill Pointe resident Carina Yariv fished trash and items out of one of the ponds not far from her damaged home. Over the course of a few minutes, she pulled out a window screen, trash can and clothing from the home at the edge of the stormwater feature. While improved since the morning after the flood, when cars were piled up in the pond, she said she thinks many items still under the water will go uncollected.
“There’s still a bunch of stuff in there that we’re never going to see,” she said, as she tossed crumpled beer cans into a trash bag.
Yariv has worked regularly to find ways to clean up around her street and help her neighbors after gutting her own house, where she lived for four years. That includes helping support a displaced family and launching a GoFundMe to cover their long-term hotel stay – while her own family is luckier, having used a connection to rent a house just outside of Weatherhill Pointe.
Yariv is among the many affected residents now weighing whether to rebuild or sell their houses. Some are using resources like Habitat for Humanity to cover remediation, while others quickly hired contractors to either start a lengthy restoration or simply tackle the immediate damage. Those in attendance on Saturday discussed the likelihood of getting federal disaster relief and whether they had flood insurance to cover some of the costs. For Yariv, it’s looking like it may not be worth trying to move back in – although she added that she does not want to live far away because of how much her family appreciates the neighborhood’s sense of community.
“We really, really loved our home,” she said. “But I think…so did everyone else [with theirs.]”
Knapp said he’s planning to organize more community-wide cleanups in the coming weeks to make the area safer – like removing hidden debris off the ground, filling in tripping hazards and, potentially, helping restore some of the houses. While residents like Yariv and Bradford are committed to continuing their daily efforts, volunteers like Wright said they would be open to coming to other events too.
Four days away from the one-month mark since Chantal’s historic rains, Weatherhill Pointe had not regained the quaint atmosphere it held before. Knapp, though, was quick to point out how much has improved since the floodwaters swept through and wrecked many spaces – especially after collective work like the weekend’s cleanup.
“It doesn’t feel like a month, because of how fast that [initial response] period went,” he said. “But it does seem that way when you look at the neighborhood and see how far we’ve come from the first day.”
Volunteers on Saturday did just that. As the morning turned to afternoon and sun began to come out from a patch in the clouds, people grabbed some sandwiches brought by residents and surveyed the scene as they left. The community is not back to normal yet – but its efforts are leading to recovery.
For those looking to donate to Chantal relief efforts, Chapelboro has curated a list of drives and fundraisers primarily driven by established institutions or grassroots efforts by community organizations.
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