Special Investigation
Sustainability - The Hurricane
by Jules (10)

This believe it or not, is a road. Isabel flooded the roads in some towns. What a tragedy Hurricane Isabel was! Isabel was tracked by the United States National Weather Service with winds of 165 mph. Fortunately by the time Isabel hit land, it only had winds of 120 MPH. Wow! It was a Category 5 at first, and then a Category 3 when it hit in North Carolina by what they call the Outer Banks. (That's a group of islands along the coast that have lots of cottages, hotels, and places for resort visitors to stay.) Highway 12 was covered with sand, and many large pieces of asphalt were washed away. A number of the people in the Outer Banks were cut off from the mainland. The only way they could get supplies was by boat. They even had to bring boats to dispense medicine. When someone we know went back to Kitty Hawk, NC (that's the place where the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight), their one-storey cottage along the ocean was covered with sand, their porch was gone, and their front and back yards were covered with wood and other things washed up by the ocean. There was no electricity and this was more than a week after the storm. Other places in North Carolina and in Virginia were hit by the storm. Power went out and trees went down. Some trees smashed into houses and into cars, destroying both. Isabel went inland after hitting North Carolina, and that saved us in the Ocean City, Maryland area where our school is. We had winds of 80-85 MPH. The waves were very big and some trees went down. Some people lost their electricity. The greatest damage in Maryland was caused by flooding in Baltimore and Annapolis. The storm tracked to the north more than had been expected and went up the Chesapeake Bay. It pushed lots of water into the rivers along the bay and flooded downtown Baltimore and Annapolis. Some places in Wilmington, Delaware were flooded, too. Many people had to throw away their carpets and furniture because it got soaked from all the flooding. In Ocean City we got really lucky, but this will help us prepare for storms in the future.