BLADENBORO — On Aug. 30, 2018, the residents of Bladenboro, North Carolina, began to glance at a tropical wave that was moving off the west coast of Africa. On Aug. 31 the wave had been classified as a tropical depression near the Cape Verde Islands.

Still, there was no premonition of what destruction was in store for their sleepy little town.

As residents began paying serious attention to the weather reports on Sept. 4, Florence was born as a Category 1 hurricane which grew to a Category 4 by the afternoon hours of Sept. 5. As it started to weaken, people began to breathe a little easier.

There was a calm before this infamous storm. By Sept. 11, just 17 years to the day of America’s 9/11, Florence resurged and began to spin driven by winds of 150 mph. Still 725 miles east of Cape Fear, North Carolina, the East Coast witnessed another slight weakening from the Category 4 classification.

She finally came ashore to Wrightsville Beach as a Category 1 hurricane Sept. 14 and proceeded to weaken to a tropical storm as it moved inland.

According to the National Weather Service, “Florence produced over 10 inches of rainfall across much of southeastern and southcentral North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina. These extreme totals were due to the tropical nature of the rain and to the slow forward speed of Florence prior to and after the hurricane made landfall. This resulted in persistent bands of rain moving inland over the eastern Carolinas and raining repeatedly over the same areas. A swath of 30-plus inches of rain was observed from Wilmington to Elizabethtown, North Carolina, including a peak storm total rainfall of 35.93 inches measured about 6 miles northwest of Elizabethtown.”

In the early morning hours of Sept. 18 Bladenboro woke to the destruction that was constant and brutal as it battered the town with rain and high winds. The flood that ensued made the sandbagging and preparations of no effect.

Reports from that day came in from local media sources including the Fayetteville Observer who published, “Several areas of Bladen County were submerged in floodwater on Sunday, including downtown Bladenboro. Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker has never seen anything like it, not even with Hurricane Matthew nearly two years ago. ‘This is worse than Matthew was so far,’ McVicker said Sunday afternoon. The roads are in really, really bad shape. There are a lot of roads that are impassable and the only thing we really have going for us is the people of Bladen County are adhering to our requests, doing what we ask.’”

Bladenboro Mayor David Hales remembers that morning vividly.

“I live just a block from here,” Hales said. “I came up town and the first wave was pretty catastrophic. It flooded our downtown area which has always been the low spot in town and we knew it would take a lot to flood it. Now, the infrastructure was under all of our stores so they couldn’t be replaced at the time. When Florence came through, it pretty much devastated everything. Even the stores that had not been damaged in the past.”

Two of the local heroes who came to the aid of the town, both in their work efforts and financial blessings were Dr. Donald Helms and his wife, Janice.

“We saw it on the news the night before,” Donald Helms said. “It looked like it was a fishhook and was going to go back out into the ocean. But instead of taking that path, it came into land. And so, that’s what got us.”

Helms’ wife spoke about and remembered those who worked so hard to prepare the town before it hit.

“The police department and the fire department did everything they could do, sandbagging everything,” she said. Donald’s office was right up the road here.”

“We came here in 1982,” Helms said. “This has been our other home.”

Helms is an optometrist in both Lumberton and Bladenboro.

“During that time, our faith is all we had,” Janice Helms said. “Because his office wound up with an awning from across the street that blew through the plate glass window in his building. We got five and a half feet of water.”

Dr. Helms said that his office looked like an aquarium.

“On the day before it happened, we moved all of my office equipment off to the side to help protect it,” Helms said. “But you can’t hide from 6 feet of water. As for my faith, it’s like my daddy said, ‘The good Lord turned lemon juice into lemonade.’”

Last Friday the town of Bladenboro got a chance to drink that lemonade.

It was supposed to rain on the day when the new downtown was going to be rededicated. As the ceremony began, rays of sunshine began to break through the clouds and you knew that even God realized that this town had seen too much rain and He prevented it for the town’s new dedication and rebirth.

Like a Phoenix rising out of wet ashes, Bladenboro rolled up its collective sleeves and began to work on the cleanup, the planning, the fundraising and the building. During the span of 1,991 days from destruction to rebirth, the town and the people who were instrumental in the rebuilding didn’t get much rest.

Bladen County Commissioner Charles Ray Peterson who lives in Bladen had the wonder of a little boy in his eyes as he looked out to see the new downtown and the refurbished buildings.

“This means the whole world to me,” Peterson said. “I’ve been here a long time, and oh man, looking around I can say that our little town is back. Back in full swing and we got a whole lot more to come. It was tough getting started, but we pulled together and made this happen.”

The areas of eastern North Carolina are no strangers to flooding and one would think that when the big one hits with such a violence that some people would just pack up and move away. The question posed to Peterson was, “why do you stay?”

His answer was short and heartfelt.

“Because this is home,” he said. “I’m too old to move. Bladen County is a good county and the people here are amazing. The people of Bladenboro are very, very special.”

Peterson described the damage and told how the water levels were almost to the levels of the city traffic signals in one area of the downtown.

From the podium set out at the town square, Peterson addressed the crowd.

“Our town has become a thriving community,” he said. “Where we can raise our children and our children will return to live and invest in the Bladenboro area. There will be more success stories.”

At the celebration of rebirth, along with town leaders and those who had a part in the rebuilding, the Elizabethtown-White Lake Chamber of Commerce brought the ribbon signifying a new start for a town that is so deserving of the praise for never giving up.

The ribbon was cut by Dr. Helms to the overwhelming cheers from hundreds of people who had gathered to witness the miracle that is Bladenboro and to lend their support as this town walks into the new adventure and a new beginning.

One of the success stories deals with local pharmacists Mark and Rebecca Hester who have navigated through many storms that have come through Bladenboro.

“We’ve been through three floods,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of rain and always learned to deal with water in the store, so we are always aware of the weather patterns. During Florence we knew something was coming. We weren’t sure, so we started moving things up and getting prepared. We had no idea that we would have 4 feet of water. Once the water started rising in town, we just started grabbing bins and moving things upstairs. We had some of our former employees helping us. We found ourselves just wading around in the water.”

Being a pharmacy, there were a lot of drugs and scripts that had to be rescued and moved to higher ground and the day seemed to drag on into weeks.

“It was freezing cold afterward,” she said. “Mark stayed there because it’s a drugstore, and you know, we had medications there that we are responsible for. So, he had to stay with the medicine. The refrigerated meds we had to move outside to a refrigerated area. He stayed there for a week. We were open within 24 hours to get medicine to people.”

The Hesters said that due to the storm wiping out the grid, communications, electricity and heat, they had to do things “the old-fashioned way.”

The couple gradually and finally moved their “Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy” into a new location at 102 Main Street in Bladenboro.

“It took a year and a half to get everything rebuilt,” she said. “This time we put the electrical up at 4 feet to be more prepared. Looking back, it was a nightmare.”

According to Mark Hester, their business had 2 feet of water when Hurricane Matthew hit and then they were getting things back to a new normal when Hurricane Florence hit.

“Everything we had done after Matthew, we had to redo after Florence hit,” he said. “We weren’t actually all moved in. We had some stuff set up, but our pharmacy was still at the other building. After hurricane Florence we tore the stuff out again started remodeling. It’s funny, when Florence came, I really didn’t think it would flood. We always had in the back of our mind that 20 years ago it had flooded and it was a possibility, but we thought that perhaps things were different and we wouldn’t flood. We kept looking out the window, making sure, but then, once we saw the water start rising in the street, it was very quick. It started coming through the parking lot and the water filled the ditch behind the shop.”

The couple continued to look out their window and it continued to rain. When they saw the waves coming down Main Street, they knew they didn’t have long before it would crash through the door.

Today with along with other shops that have been rebuilt in Bladenboro, they have elevated electrical wiring, some have added generators, the floors are not carpeted, but have the trendy cement so that the water can abate through the floor.

Resilience. Ingenuity. Gut-level courage. Hard work. Determination. Standing toe-to-toe with a killer hurricane and a debilitating natural disaster.

There are so many adjectives that you could use to describe the town of Bladenboro, but perhaps the most endearing is the word that Commissioner Peterson used for a town that has “no quit” in them.

“It’s our home.”