By Jeff Hampton
The Virginian-Pilot
SOUTH MILLS, N.C. —Bill Johns drove an old Army truck onto Bunker Hill Road Wednesday afternoon, pushing through 4 feet of water.
He carefully followed rebar poles pounded into the ground along the edge of the pavement, hidden beneath the coffee-colored water. Two gallon white jugs rested on top of the poles like channel markers in the sound.
Bubba Banks and Brett Walsh of the South Mills Volunteer Fire Department stood in waders on the long wooden bed of the truck. Their mission: deliver food to 81-year-old Lizzie Brumsey, trapped by the flood waters since Sunday night.
Rains from Hurricane Matthew drenched the local fields and filled the ditches and swamps draining into Joyce Creek until the winding waterway overflowed onto the roads. Dozens of yards and homes flooded along N.C. 343, Bunker Hill Road, Muddy Road, Stiles Lane, Publo Road and Pine Ridge Drive, among others.
Motorcycles, lawn mowers, mail boxes and sheds were submerged. Fire department volunteers rescued more than 50 people on Monday. Since then, the crew has taken food, water and medicine to whomever they found needing it.
On Tuesday, a boat was still the only way around much of South Mills, which lies north of Elizabeth City and west of Moyock. Even the Army truck was not big enough, Banks said. Wednesday was a little better.
“It’s gone down a lot, but it’s still got a long ways to go,” he said.
Brumsey lives in the house she and her family built 51 years ago. She raised eight children here. Storms have come and gone, but this flooding was the worst ever, she said.
“Never seen it like this,” she said.
People were parking on Puddin Ridge Road and walking across a field and through the woods to get to their homes on Taylor Leigh Drive. Neighbors on Amanda Court were using a path through a bean field nearly a half mile wide to get to a passable road where they caught a ride to the store. A man living on Lilly Road had to park his car and walk in hip boots more than 100 yards to get home for supper following a day’s work.
Resident Chris Horton was driving friends Wednesday to the store in a monster truck named Sasquatch. The wheels and suspension propped the truck cab nearly 10 feet off the ground, plenty high for a dry drive. He carefully followed the markers to avoid deep, invisible ditches.
Banks and his brother, Tommy Banks, had walked along the road in waders all day Monday, setting out the markers with the boat following along. Tommy is the chief of the South Mills Volunteer Fire Department.
“This is the biggest thing we’ve ever had to deal with,” he said.
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