By Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 14 1996; Page A4

The day after Hurricane Bertha pounded the North Carolina coast, residents and workers here broke out light and heavy equipment and began picking up in the storm's wake.

A caravan of heavy equipment from throughout North Carolina and surrounding states rolled onto the hard hit communities of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach about 15 miles south of Wilmington. The two towns bore the brunt of 115 mph gusts that destroyed several piers and sheared dozens of roofs or parts of roofs off buildings.

After the storm left the Carolinas, it swept northward along some of the East Coast's favorite beach resorts, disrupting vacations, forcing evacuations, and causing damage to beaches and marinas. It hit Ocean City, Md., at about breakfast time, then moved up the coast to New England.

In New Bern, one of the hardest hit communities in North Carolina, marinas at three hotels were wrecked.

But the hurricane spared the mid-Atlantic region the fury some had feared.

"This storm could have been a lot worse," said James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA was preparing to close down its emergency operations.

On the long stretch of beach known as the Strand, south of the border between the two Carolinas, surfers were back in action. Most of the 250,000 people evacuated from coastal areas of North Carolina had returned, authorities said.

The road from the mainland to Kitty Hawk reopened at 6:30 this morning.

Some 400,000 persons in North Carolina and another 55,000 in Virginia were without power on Friday night. By late this afternoon, power had been restored to all but 125,000.

Nonetheless, the storm caused its share of damage, and left a mess for cleanup crews.

Workers using large earthmovers scooped mounds of sand off the boardwalk in Carolina Beach and dumped it back onto the shoreline. Nearby, prison inmates in bright orange vests who had been bused in from around the state shoveled sand back onto the beach. Dozens of other prison workers picked up debris strewn throughout the island, which had been almost completely evacuated before the hurricane hit.

Work crews from South Carolina and Georgia operated heavy equipment and power saws to clear fallen trees from streets and free power lines snarled in tree limbs. In Wilmington and the coastal towns, people climbed ladders to replace shingles and shutters.

Bertha caused severe damage but not total devastation along coastal North Carolina. "Thank goodness we didn't have a disaster," said Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., who surveyed Carolina Beach and Kure Beach this morning.

The two towns, located on an island about four miles long and two miles wide, were for the most part still without power. A handful of people who remained on the island braving the hurricane were not allowed onto the mainland today.

By mid-afternoon, a row of cars about three-quarters of a mile long stretched back from the bridge connecting the island to the mainland. Most of the motorists, some of whom were evacuated on Wednesday, hoped the police would allow them back onto the island. But officials said that in order to clear roads and because of security they needed to restrict access until power was restored late tonight or Sunday morning. "The primary job now is to clean up," Kure Beach Mayor Betty Medlin said.

The mayor noted that no serious injuries were reported either on the island or the mainland. "All in all, I think we did well," Medlin said.

Construction worker William Holt was among those cleaning up the island just 24 hours after a harrowing encounter with Bertha. Working a construction job at the Carolina Hotel on Carolina Beach when the hurricane hit, Holt ignored warnings to evacuate because the last news report he'd heard said Bertha would probably miss the Wilmington area.

When 115 mph winds slammed the beach late Friday morning, Holt took refuge in a room on the top floor of the two-story hotel. "The walls were shaking. The roof kept going up and down," Holt said.

Then, the roof was ripped away. Fierce winds howled through the room while sheets of rain soaked him. "I thought I was going to die," Holt said. "It scared the mud out of me."

Terrified, Holt grabbed a radio cord and took refuge in a tiny closet, securing himself with the the cord to the closet door.

Eventually, he walked down the still-intact wooden stairs and made his way into a secure room on the ground floor. This afternoon, Holt and hotel owner Edwin Howlett hauled cabinets, TVs and mattresses from hotel rooms to a nearby storage garage.

"I couldn't buy this kind of publicity," said Howlett, who was interviewed by several television reporters.

But for most people in the Wilmington area, life appeared to be returning to normal.

Most stores were open, with hardware stores doing brisk business in rakes and other cleanup tools. Some small convenience stores were out of bottled water. At some hotels, patrons sunned themselves on pool decks. Meanwhile, golfers were back on the course and at driving ranges.

By midafternoon, work crews in Wilmington had cleared away fallen trees that had blocked dozens of streets, including some major arteries.

Neither Hunt nor any local officials ventured to make damage estimates.

The hurricane interrupted the seaside vacations of thousands. Emily Tripp, 16, and a group of relatives and friends were vacationing at her father's motel on Kure Beach when the hurricane hit Friday morning.

"This big roar woke me up. I walked out and saw air conditioners flying down the street. It was pretty bad," said Tripp, who lives in Missouri with her mother.

Since Friday, Tripp, her brother, a friend and her father have been marooned without power or a phone and with little food. Today, instead of enjoying the clear, sunny, 90-degree day, they hauled deck furniture and tree limbs out of the motel's pool.

"It's been a scary experience, not a vacation," Tripp said.

Staff writer Dan Morgan in Washington contributed to this report.