The coast was still reeling from Hurricane Bertha, and then came Fran. Landing a vicious uppercut, she cold-cocked eastern North Carolina in the early morning hours of September 6, 1996. Winds topped 100 miles per hour. A 12-foot storm surge crashed through dunes and beachfront houses. On the coast, damage estimates ranged as high as one billion dollars. Ninety percent of North Topsail Beach lay in ruins, completely destroyed.

Had we seen the worst? For those who remembered Hazel and Hugo, the answer was no. It will happen again. And it will be worse.

Or maybe not. Since 1997, a research team from Carolina's Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) has studied ways to reduce the destruction from coastal storms. Their 446-page report, Coastal Hazards Mitigation: Public Notification, Expenditure Limitations, and Hazard Areas Acquisition, describes a set of policies that would limit storm damage by limiting construction in especially vulnerable areas.

In brief, the report recommends that people selling coastal property in “high-hazard” areas be required to disclose the risks in writing, that governments limit subsidies for construction in vulnerable areas, and that state and local governments acquire high-hazard properties and protect them as recreation areas or nature preserves.

The study, requested by the 1997 North Carolina Disaster Recovery Task Force and the Division of Coastal Management, was led by David Godschalk, professor of city and regional planning, and included doctoral students Richard Norton, Craig Richardson, and David Salvesen, and a master’s student, Junko Peterson.

According to Godschalk, no single policy change will protect the coast from devastation. To reduce injuries and property damage, he says, state and local governments will have to collaborate on a package of measures like the ones in the CURS report-steps that become more difficult as memories of Fran begin to fade.

“It would be a shame if we were to forget the lessons of Hurricane Fran,” Godschalk says. “It’s a lot less expensive in the long run to take some action while the sun is shining rather than to wait until the hurricane is bearing down on you or the flood waters are rising at the door.”

The report is available for $20 from CURS, CB 3410, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3410.