Thursday, August 20, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on August 19, 2026
The torrential rains that fell on Pea Island starting on July 24 caught everyone by surprise. That was a key message from a community meeting held on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 18 at the Fessenden Center in Buxton.
“When the rain happened on the 24th, we got six inches that NOAA was recording for that day,” Pea Island and Alligator River Manager Dawn Washington told the audience. “Then over the next three days, almost an inch a day.” Eventually between 13 and 15 inches fell in over a two-week period.
Of particular concern to residents at the meeting was how quickly the road flooded during that storm and the delay in issuing warnings and closing the road south of the Basnight Bridge. People who drove on the road at night reported standing water that made it difficult to identify the roadbed and a tow truck operator described multiple cars with damaged engines whose occupants unknowingly drove into water that was deep enough to damage the engine.
The amount of rain and how quickly it fell caught Dare County officials and NCDOT managers by surprise. Although heavy rain had been predicted, the intensity of what happened “occurred kind of randomly out of nowhere,” said Dare County Manager Bobby Outten. In this type of situation, “we don’t have that state emergency to [close the road]” he said, adding that “NCDOT can do that anywhere if it is…for public safety.”
NCDOT Division One Engineer Ronnie Sawyer stated that “we did not know exactly where the flooding was going to occur if there was going to be flooding, and we didn’t know to the extent of the flooding. So, it was difficult to plan things.”
Pea Island where the road closure occurred, he said, is somewhat unique in that “it’s not close to residents.” Sawyer emphasized, though, that NCDOT works closely with the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, noting that he received a message from Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac raising concerns about the flooding.
Sawyer checked with his Dare County staff, who told him there was “over a foot of water in some places.” And the decision was made to close the NC12 on the north end of Pea Island.
Much of the discussion with NCDOT and local officials examined what was done to get NC12 reopened and keeping it open after the July storm, as well as what can be done in the future to respond to flooding on the road.
There was at one point, Sawyer said, “some drainage through that area more than we have in the last several years.” Those drainage wedges are not in the NCDOT right of way, rather they are in land that is part of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. They had not been maintained, and Sawyer made it clear that turnover at USFW and NCDOT was most likely why the wedges had not been kept in good condition.
The discussion with the audience focused on the communication tools the county and NCDOT have to let the public know about road closures.
Dare County has an app, OBXAlerts, that will send countywide alerts to a phone or mobile device. Sawyer pointed to a recently launched NCDOT website and app, DriveNC, that will give users real time updates of road conditions anywhere in the state. NCDOT also says it is considering staging mobile message boards closer to impacted areas.
During the question and comment period, several individuals described the reflective markers in the center line of the road as invisible at night as water covered the road, making it difficult to tell where the roadbed was.
Sawyer said that at some point, NCDOT may be able to replace the reflectors with snowplow reflectors that allow a plow to go over them without breaking.
Responding to a question about pumping the road dry, Sawyer acknowledged it was a possibility, but added that since the water would have to be pumped to the ocean, the road would have to be closed to pump the flood waters away.
The rains that caused the NC 12 road closures on July 24 were something Sawyer, who has been with NCDOT for 32 years, had never seen before.
“I’m sure it’s happened in that length of time, but I can’t remember,” he said.
