Gov. James M. Cox Public Service Award
News Staff / Greenville Daily Reflector

Nov. 21, 1999

The Tar River reached the newspaper's power supply on a Friday night. As rising water inundated the transformers of the local utility, newsroom power went out. It was about 10:30 p.m, and a Saturday edition of the Greenville Daily Reflector could not be published.

"The next day we gathered in a dark newsroom," Editor Al Clark said. "One group of reporters and editors used flashlights and the one phone that worked to gather information.

"Another group loaded our computers into cars and drove 40 miles to the Wilson Daily Times. There we designed and typeset the combined Saturday-Sunday edition in a makeshift newsroom we put together in the Daily Times' conference room. Stories were e-mailed or dictated from Greenville."
Power was restored the next day but the river continued to threaten the power supply, forcing deadlines five to six hours early.

"We constantly had to be ready to load up the computers again and head west," Clark said.

Daily Reflector photographers used bottled water to develop film, and dried some of it on a line behind the building.

The troubles began during the Labor Day weekend of 1999, when Hurricane Dennis dumped heavy rains. Cold fronts followed, with more significant rains saturating the ground.

When Hurricane Floyd made landfall Sept. 15, the Tar River running through downtown Greenville was more than three feet above flood stage. It eventually would crest at 17 feet above flood stage, higher than ever recorded.

Another river, the Neuse, forms the southern boundary of Pitt County. It and its tributaries also went over their banks. The flooding, Clark said, was "beyond anything anyone here had ever seen."