28 years later: Hurricane Fran’s impact in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Exactly 28 years ago, on September 5, 1996, Hurricane Fran made landfall late in the evening as a Category 3 storm with 115 mph winds on Bald Head Island in North Carolina.

Through the night, Fran moved north, very close to I-40, right through communities like Buies Creek, Raleigh, Durham and Roxboro.

Across the state, and here at home in central North Carolina, the scene was devastation.

Heavy rain paired with hurricane-force wind gusts toppled trees onto everything—homes, cars and powerlines. Roughly 4,000 power poles across the state were snapped, brining with them a domino effect of power outages for up to 1.7 million customers for days. For some in North Carolina, the outages went on for more than a week.

More than 8 inches of rain fell in our communities in central North Carolina, flooding creeks and rivers and making roadways impassable not just locally, but across the state.

Along the coast, up to 12 feet of storm surge devastated homes and beaches. Storm surge on North Topsail Island carved a 100-foot-wide inlet through the barrier island.

Forty feet of beach was also eroded on Topsail Island, destroying even more homes in the process. Piers were destroyed, dunes were flattened, and people were left to clean up the pieces of their businesses and livelihoods.

Hurricane Fran also took the lives of 24 people in North Carolina.

At the time, Fran was the most devastating hurricane to hit our state causing nearly $5 billion (adjusted for inflation) in damage. Fran would later be upset by Floyd just three years later, which caused about $11.4 billion in damage in 1999. Then again in 2018, Hurricane Florence caused roughly $17 billion in damages, making it the most devastating in the North Carolina history.

More than $900 million of Fran’s damage happened around Raleigh and Wake County, and unfortunately, our agriculture industry recorded over $700 million in damage.

If you want more in-depth information about Hurricane Fran, you can read more from the NC Climate Office here . Just keep in mind that this particular write-up was from 2016, two years before Hurricane Florence.

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