I lived a stones throw from Pages Creek and could hear the ocean waves from the Atlantic on any quiet evening. My wife and I moved our dogs and the neighbor's dog ( they were elderly and evacuated to their daughter's place in Goldsboro ) and ourselves to my shop which I had built myself and made tough enough to withstand a 1 or 2 cat. Our home was a tiny crackerbox built in 1933 and not heavy construction at all. Seemed for forever for the storm to come in and it literally rained nonstop for several hours.
When the eye came over we took the dogs out in mid shin deep water to use the bathroom and then got back inside. We were listening to WECT on the radio and I can remember these poor girls calling into wect and talking to the meterologist George elliot over the air saying how bad it was getting and George saying something to the effect of " its all right girls the back side of this storm will be easy. " About that time we started geting hammered sticks pinecones and limbs bludgeoning my shop and hearing big trees coming down some of which you could feel through the shop floor as they hit the ground. Turns out old George Elliot was wrong on that one.
The one that I remember with some humor was the Bertha in 1996. As the eye passed over, me and a couple neighbors went out into the road with chainsaws to clear the road of a downed tree for emergency vehicles if need be. From down the road came a woman driving like a nut and she had to stop as she got to us. We aked her where she was going and she said " to the store to get diapers". We warned her that we were in the eye and the backside would be on us soon but she headed on down the road. I don't know if she made it back home or not that day because it was only a few minutes before we started getting the eyewall and back of the storm.