September 24, 2018 — As Hurricane Florence pounded the North Carolina coast, representatives from Endurance Seafood used social media to give a first-hand account of the situation.
“We are all safe,” the company announced on a 14 September Facebook post. “The dock and coolers, not so good.”
Company video shows a storm surge pushing into the Oriental, North Carolina community. It was powerful enough to take the down the dock, damage equipment and flood the area. Five days later, Endurance owner Keith Bruno showed UNC Public Media the extent of the damage. The fishing equipment was safe, he said. However, the land operations, where Endurance buys and markets seafood, has been destroyed.
Bruno told UNC’s My Home, NC that the company will live up to its name.
“You’ve got to move forward, you’ve got to keep going…because that’s what we do,” he said. “We every once in a while have to pay a price to live so close to beauty.”
What price that will be for Hurricane Florence remains to be seen, but AccuWeather Founder and President Joel Myers predicted the storm will cause up to USD 60 billion (EUR 51.1 billion) in damage, and that includes the losses from the ongoing flooding wreaking havoc in the Carolinas.
A substantial portion of those losses will be incurred by the seafood industry, and once the weather subsides, officials want to be ready so they can expedite the recovery process.