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River. so it was constant wave action. beating up against basically our flooring with water seeping in through the sliding glass door and up on the deck and coming up under the flooring. the conditions right now have allowed to us actually take a breath. the wind has died down. we've still got a lot of rain but conditions are actually a little bit lighter in comparison. >> what have you been seeing through the day outside your window? >> it is just unnerving. lots of debris. there are refrigerators, benches, there's a pontoon boat in the neighbor's yard. our one neighbor has a couple trees dow...

Conditions? >> right now there are some wind gusts occasionally and some rain that started two hours ago. it is getting worse little by little but right now it is not bad at all. heather: why did you decide to ride it out? were you under mandatory evacuation? >> we are under mandatory evacuation where we live. i am a retired nurse. my husband, retired law enforcement, kind of against our grain to leave. we are very prepared. we have a generator and draft and provisions and we have a home with pilings that help with the wind. we could have left as late as this afternoon but as the storm got les...

Feet high. and behind that they have the houses on the beaches. and in north carolina, the building codes are very strict. same with south carolina. so you have to have the house on the stilts, on the pilings and on top of that. what you have to picture in this area of the 7 to 11 feet. you have the normal high tide and you add 11 feet to that. well, that's going to be over the top of the dunes. now maybe some of those houses are at the 7 to 11 foot height. but this doesn't even take into account the wave action on top of that. it's not like the ocean is going to be calm. we could see waves ra...

That's worst case. that's not going to happen. can that will we really see something that bad? six or nine feet. you have floating cars. and people's first floor covered. >> it depends on how low the elevation is. eastern north carolina is relatively flat. houston and even some of the below sea level. new orleans. a lot of eastern north carolina has a little bit of elevation. i don't think we'll see nine feet of water up to a rooftop. we'll see the houses the building codes are strict. they get a hurricane once every four years. the roofs have to be built a certain way. and inspected to pass i...

Fran rolled through the area in 1996. describe to me what the scene was like when a ten-foot storm surge destroyed the place. >> docks were flowing completely off the pilings and they'll be everywhere. the boats we find if the wind is strong enough, they'll come up over and everywhere. they'll end up on the street. it will be a big devastation is what it will be like. >> that's what you all anticipate here in the coming days. back in 1996, you were a firefighter. you were living in carolina beach, one of those barrier islands under mandatory evacuation. right now, we know there are people who ...