Why Do We Stay?

By Anmargaret Warner, produced by Out There Podcast

Released on April 22, 2021

Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.

WILLOW BELDEN: Happy Earth Day! Since today is a time for thinking about the environment, I’d like to tell you about one of our sponsors, Athletic Brewing. Athletic Brewing makes non-alcoholic craft beers.

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(Out There theme music starts)

WILLOW: Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.

Before we get started, I wanted to remind you that we’re currently accepting applications for our summer production internship. This internship is a chance to work one-on-one with me, and learn about all aspects of making this podcast — from evaluating pitches, to conducting interviews, to editing scripts, to working on sound design. 

Applications are due April 30, and you can find all the details about the internship on our website, outtherepodcast.com. Just click on our blog.

(music ends)

Here at Out There, we like to define the outdoors as anything beyond your doorstep. And when we think about what’s beyond that doorstep, we encounter a lot of different things. The natural environment. The weather. Our communities. And sometimes, those things collide.

Many of us have experienced at least one extreme weather event. Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes. But what happens when the weather — and the climate — poses a longer-term threat? If you live in a place that’s prone to natural disasters, how do you decide whether to uproot your family and find a new home, or just stay put? And if you do decide to stay, why? This week’s story is about how one person is navigating the difficult decisions about what to do when the outside comes in. Annmargaret Warner has the story.

(sound of gentle waves begins)

ANMARGARET WARNER: About 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina, there’s a small island named Ocracoke. It sits at the southern end of a chain of barrier islands called the Outer Banks. 

On Ocracoke, there’s one public school. One health clinic. One gas station — though if it runs dry, you can try and finagle your way into filling your tank down at the marina. 

Ocracoke has about 700 year-round residents. Most don’t lock their cars or their front doors. The only way to get to the island is by boat or private plane. It gets really busy in the summer, when tourists come to visit the beach. It’s all national seashore, and it’s beautiful.

(sound of waves stops)

Ocracoke can be an idyllic place. In late spring, the smell of confederate jasmine flowers mixes with the salty air. The cicadas and crickets sing at night. 

(soft, rhythmic music begins to play)

But like everywhere else, the island has its own challenges too. And those challenges are personal to me. Because Ocracoke is my hometown. It’s where my mom and brother still live and work. So the island’s unstable future has me worried.

Ocracoke is a narrow spit of sand that sits right in the path of powerful hurricanes that barrel up the East Coast. There’s usually a big storm every decade. At least. That holds true as far back as you can really trace on the island, to the late 1700s. And looking to the future, climate scientists predict hurricanes will bring more rainfall and flooding. And maybe higher wind speeds too. But it’s not only hurricanes that threaten the island. Ocracoke basically sits at sea level. And the sea level is rising. 

To be fair, every coastal community will be threatened by sea-level rise. Ocracoke is not the MOST disaster prone. And it’s definitely not the most populated. But it’s the most familiar to me.

(music ends)

In the wake of many hurricanes, some people — off-islanders — will say: “Well why don’t you just leave? You know. Why don’t you just go? Go somewhere else. It’s expensive to stay there, and to re-build over and over again. And it’s dangerous. Right?” 

It’s easy to brush off questions like that. Backhanded accusations. But the concerns are legitimate. Why DO people stay? Why do they continue living on an island that is vulnerable to hurricanes and sea-level rise? Why don’t they move away? 

(music begins with the sound of plinking notes)

It’s understandable that people like my family still live on Ocracoke. My mom’s owned a business on the island for 30 years. She owns her own home too. Leaving would disrupt everything she’s built.

Many other islanders can trace their family history back generations, to the island’s first white settlers. But not everyone has such visibly concrete ties to the place. What about them? What if your family hasn’t lived on Ocracoke for generations? What if you’re not a fisherwoman, or don’t own your own business. Why are people like that set on staying?

(music ends)

MAURO IBARRA: My name is Mauro Ibarra. And I live in Ocracoke.

ANMARGARET: Mauro Ibarra is 48. He’s a manager at the only grocery store on the island. It’s called the Variety Store. Mauro’s lived on Ocracoke for 28 years. But he hadn’t even heard of the island until a few days before he moved there.

(music begins to play)

Mauro grew up in Mexico in a tiny mountain town, about a five hour drive north of Mexico City. He left when he was just a teenager and came to the U.S. He’s worked a lot of different jobs throughout the south. Everything from a factory in Texas making diapers, to picking peaches on a farm in Georgia.

MAURO: Well picking peaches? That’s a bad job. Good money, oh yeah. 

ANMARGARET: $110 a day, he says. It took him a week to make that much money in Texas. But he couldn’t stand the peach fuzz.

MAURO: The little hair, it gets into your body and you start scratching and it’s nonstop all day long. 

ANMARGARET: Eventually Mauro made his way to eastern North Carolina. A town known as Little Washington. It was 1992 and he was working on a farm. And after just a few days, his boss pulled him aside.

MAURO: And he told me that I was smart enough to do something else than what I was doing in Little Washington, working on the farm. And he asked me if my wife knew how to clean rooms, and she said, “Yes,” because I asked her. I said, “Yeah, yeah, I can work motels,” you know. 

And he said, “Can you cook?” 

I said, “Not really.”

I never...see I don’t cook. But anyway, he said, “Well you can learn.” 

ANMARGARET: The boss had a friend on Ocracoke who needed help cleaning hotel rooms. Mauro and his wife decided to take a chance. They drove to the ferry and headed to the island. Mauro had never been on a boat that big.

MAURO: And I got out of the car, maybe about midway. And I just looked around and I say, I went to talk to my wife, I say, “There’s nothing around.” And I didn’t know if we were lost or where we were going to end up. I said: “I think we need to just turn around back.” 

ANMARGARET: They’d never been to an island before. They barely spoke any English. And they didn’t know who’d be meeting them when they got to the other side. They didn’t even have a phone number to call. 

But when Mauro and his wife drove off the ferry, someone was waiting for them. It was a local who owned a hotel and restaurant. Mauro’s boss from the farm had called ahead. 

Mauro remembers they ate hamburgers that first night. And then they got to work, cleaning the 40-plus hotel rooms, every single day of the week. Washing and folding sheets. Making beds. After a few months, Mauro moved over to the restaurant to cook. It was hard work, but decent money. And it was way better than some of Mauro’s other jobs. No peach fuzz in sight.

It wasn’t long before Mauro’s first hurricane came along. It was his first year on the island. 

MAURO: We didn’t know nothing about the storms. About hurricanes. How dangerous or how bad they can really be. 

ANMARGARET: He laughs, remembering how naive he was. The storm was Hurricane Emily. It was Labor Day weekend, the final push of the tourist season.

MAURO: See, we didn’t leave. We didn’t know what to do.

(sighing sound) 

I’m sure they told us about it. But we...see the motel was packed. And we just saw they were packing up and left. And then we saw the wind started blowing harder and harder, you know. And we lost electricity. We stayed in 309, in the third floor. Waterfront. We saw when the water started coming in the road, underneath the fish house, and moving to the motel. And that’s when we find out that that was bad. We got these three big windows out front. Thought the windows were going to blow out. That was the first one.

ANMARGARET: Everyone on Ocracoke remembers their first hurricane. The first one I remember blew out a window in our living room. My brother and I were playing in a teepee in our bedroom. And my mom scooped us out and we held hands crossing thigh high water to get to the neighbor’s house. 

Hurricanes have always been a part of life on the island. Mauro started to get used to them. For the last few years, he’s made it a habit to evacuate before the bad ones.

In 2019, Mauro and his wife even bought a piece of property off island, on the mainland. There were a lot of factors that went into the decision, but one reason was so they could have a place to evacuate to, when storms hit. They found an apartment outside of Greenville, in eastern North Carolina. They closed on the last day of August. And then one week later, Hurricane Dorian hit Ocracoke. 

(chime-like music begins)

Dorian might sound familiar to you. It completely devastated parts of the Bahamas. Mauro thought this was going to be a big storm for Ocracoke too. So he didn’t wait long before evacuating. He and his family headed to their new apartment on the mainland.

By the time it got to North Carolina, Dorian was only a category one hurricane. The wind speeds were lower. But Dorian was stronger in other ways.

MAURO: I made me some coffee and I went to my sofa, and I got a phone call from Jose, my brother in law. He said, “Did you hear about the island?”

I said, “What happened?”

He said, “The water is getting in the store.”

I said, “How bad?”

He said, “Bad”.

I said, “Ok”. And then right after that, I got the video. 

(sound of rushing water and wind blowing hard in the background)

ANMARGARET: Mauro’s brother-in-law texted him a video. It shows chest-high water rushing past Mauro’s house. There’s a red van parked in the driveway. The water is almost up to the windows, and waves are rolling onto the hood like it’s a beach. 

Where did all that water come from?

It’s called storm surge. The hurricane’s winds shifted, and in a matter of minutes, seawater was suddenly rushing across the island and into people’s homes. Some people scrambled into their attics and had to be rescued later by boat. Mauro was afraid.

MAURO: At that point, I didn’t know. Didn’t know if I was going to have a job. If I was going to have a house? Don’t know. When the water goes that high, don’t know if the house is going to stand up for a long time or just...don’t know. Don’t know.

WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of the story in a moment. But first…

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And now, back to the story.

ANMARGARET: After Hurricane Dorian hit Ocracoke, it was a whole week before Mauro was allowed back onto the island. He was shocked by the damage. Many of the homes and businesses on Ocracoke had flooded, including the school. And the Variety Store. Almost all of the cars were totaled. Most people didn’t have electricity. Parts of Highway 12, the only paved road at the north end of the island, had been washed away. People were taking everything that got ruined out of their homes — couches, refrigerators, washing machines — and putting it in their yards. Mauro had never seen anything like it before. Not many people had. The last hurricane to bring that much water onto the island was in 1944. 

(melancholy music begins to play)

In Mauro’s home, a thick sludge of mud and sewage coated the floor and crept up the walls. Mold was starting to grow. Mauro threw out his mattress and pretty much all of his furniture and appliances, and slept in his car for four nights. He had to hire someone to help him tear out the floor and the walls.

The clean-up process brought normal life on the island to a halt that fall. Visitors weren’t allowed to ride the ferry over until December — a full three months after Dorian. Of course, the recovery process lasted a lot longer than that. Some businesses were so damaged they weren’t able to open until a year later. And to this day when you drive around the island you’ll see dozens of homes getting raised up on stilts. It’s how a lot of the newer structures were getting built anyways. But after Dorian hit, they started lifting everything up on stilts, including the old church. Mauro’s hoping to do this with his rental house too. Which shows resilience, right? Lift up above the floodlines, and prepare for next time. But it also shows an intention to stay. 

(music ends)

It’s kind of surprising — this urge to stay put. Your home gets flooded, all of your belongings get ruined, your whole way of life is upended for months...and yet you stick around. 

Sure, hurricane-wise, things were quiet for Ocracoke last year. But zoom out and the 2020 hurricane season was record-breaking. There were 30 named storms. And a dozen of those made landfall in the U.S. Given the realities of climate change, we’re on track for things to get worse. It’s not yet clear exactly what that will look like. There will likely be stronger hurricanes, though the frequency of those storms is still uncertain. But either way, it’s not promising for Ocracoke. So why, after all of that, do people stay?

MAURO: The reason I say why here. I know this is a good community. Good people and all. They do, they’ve helped a lot of people in the past. Over the years I’ve been around, if someone’s down, they do a fish fry. And they do anything to collect money to help them. You don’t see that anywhere. Only Ocracoke, I think.

ANMARGARET: Not a GoFundMe. A fish fry. Mauro tells me that everybody knows everybody in Ocracoke. Which isn’t an exaggeration. 

But Ocrocoke isn’t unique in this respect. There are other tight-knit communities all over the world. But Mauro has built his life HERE. 

ANMARGARET: When did you start feeling like a part of the community on Ocracoke?

MAURO: When I moved into the Variety Store. Cause I got to know more people. Nice, friendly, they made me feel like home. You know, you think different when you got good people around you. You feel like it’s where you want to be.

(upbeat music begins to play)

ANMARGARET: Mauro started working at the Variety Store in 1996, stacking drinks in the coolers and sweeping the floors. Now he’s a manager. He lives with his family just behind the Variety Store, in a house they rent from the store owner. When Mauro’s eating lunch he can still hear the PA system. So he knows if he needs to head back in a hurry, or if he can take his time. He goes in every day of the week. 

I met Mauro early one Saturday while he worked the cash register.

(sound of Anmargaret entering a building)

ANMARGARET: Good morning Mauro.

MAURO: You doing okay?

ANMARGARET: Yeah. How are you?

MAURO: Good, good.

ANMARGARET: It was the first week of December, and the island was quiet. Mauro had just set up the coffee station, and unlocked the front door. And he knew every customer.

(music ends)

MAURO: Morning Andy.

ANDY: You’ve got a good man for that this morning.

(Mauro laughs, and cash register beeps)

MAURO: Okay, $12.69.

(sound of change clinking)

MAURO: $7.31. Let me give you a bag.

(sound of bag rustling)

MAURO: Thank you Andy.

ANDY: Alright buddy. Catch you later.

(register closes)

ANMARGARET: After Andy walks out the door, Mauro tells me they used to be neighbors. 

MAURO: I’ve known Andy for a long time. Very long time. Yeah, he’s a good man. He comes every morning. He gets the same thing. Just crackers and gatorade. The same flavor. 

(Mauro laughs)

ANMARGARET: Mauro did this for everyone who walked in. Told me little tidbits about them, without me even asking. I think this is what community sounds like. The easy interactions. The familiarity. The comfort. 

But these little pleasantries are just the tip of the iceberg, the outer trappings of community. Because in the end, knowing everyone’s name isn’t really what matters. What matters is the sense of security and comfort you get from being a part of a community. The implicit understanding that you’re in this together. If you’re going through a crisis — like clean-up from a major hurricane — that comfort can help you make it through. 

Mauro told me he feels safe on Ocracoke. And I think this sense of safety is born out of trust. He trusts his boss, his neighbors, his customers. Two of his children have autism. Mauro trusts their teachers. He believes his kids will find the most care and attention with the safety net of the island community looking out for them. 

(music begins to play)

After Hurricane Dorian, islanders looked out for each other too. Sharing an extra bedroom here, a truck there. Time volunteering at the food pantry.

Still, for a lot of people, Dorian was kind of a wake-up call. A time to re-evaluate. Is this where they wanted to keep living? A handful of people decided no — they’d had enough. But most people — including Mauro and his family — have decided to stay on the island.

(music ends)

Turns out, what Mauro is experiencing on Ocracoke is a universal phenomenon. It happens to people all over the world. And it’s something that has far-reaching implications. 

DR. MICHELLE DOVIL: I’m Dr. Michelle Dovil, a visiting assistant professor at Howard University in the department of sociology and criminology.

ANMARGARET: As a sociologist, one of Dr. Dovil’s main research areas is coastal communities. She looks at why people keep living where they do, despite the immediate threat of hurricanes and the long-term threat of sea-level rise. Dovil led a study in eastern North Carolina where she looked at this thing called place attachment. It’s the relationship a person has with their physical environment.

DOVIL: Individuals who owned their homes had a stronger place attachment. Individuals who had stronger familial ties had stronger place attachments. And we also saw that people who had strong, like their identities that were tied to these communities, also felt strongly about their emotional bonds towards those lands.

ANMARGARET: Mauro doesn’t own his home in Ocracoke. And he could take his skillset to a grocery store anywhere. But he’s raised his family on the island. And his identity is tied to the community. It’s part of who he is. Once a place becomes central to someone’s identity, you can become dependent on it, and it can be very difficult to leave. Especially when you’re up against slow-moving threats like climate change.

DOVIL: Sea-level rise is happening over a long period of time. And we’re asking people to process this information that’s gonna happen within the next 50 to 100 years. So how can we ask someone, “Hey are you willing to relocate? Hey, why are you still here in this high-risk or highly vulnerable place?” when these things are going to happen over a long term period.

ANMARGARET: The long-term threat feels intangible compared to the very concrete benefits of living in a community you trust. 

After Hurricane Dorian, Mauro and his wife agreed they wouldn’t buy property on Ocracoke. It seemed too risky. And rationally, Mauro is still on board with that. But the sentimental side of him still likes to dream. 

MAURO: I’m being very honest with you. I mean, I want to own something here. Like, even a small piece of land. Something. I feel like I’ve been here too long and not have nothing! I always got that in my mind.

DOVIL: Mmmm. I’ve heard that before. I’ve heard that before. I completely understand, you know, the concept of just wanting to own something because it means something, especially when you’ve been there for 28 years. But I would not recommend it. I really do think it’s risky. But I totally understand the psychology behind it. And I sympathize with people. 

ANMARGARET: Dovil has seen people all along the coast, from New Orleans to Virginia Beach, grappling with decisions on how to make it work. Which is why she thinks it’s time to start thinking about a new approach.

DOVIL: The current conversation is centered on adaptation and mitigation. But I strongly recommend that we start shifting the conversation to migration, whether that be forced or voluntary.

ANMARGARET: Migration, as in picking up and moving for the long haul. It's a difficult thing to stomach. Connection to a place is deeply visceral. Dovil says there’s this thinking that if you want to get an entire community to move, then a local leader the community respects and trusts needs to go first. Maybe it’s a priest. Or a family matriarch. The hope is that it becomes a sort of domino effect. And even then, Dovil knows this is a complex process. 

DOVIL: This is a global issue. In the U.S. alone, there are over 50 coastal communities with more than 100 million residents at risk for sea-level rise, you know. And sea-level rise is changing our coasts, our economies, our ecosystems. And so this is an issue not only that academics and researchers and practitioners are looking at and are trying to understand this social phenomena. But also the government. Like government officials, right? Who are supposed to, you know, secure, protect and keep these communities safe. Like, how do we deal with this?

ANMARGARET: These challenges apply to all kinds of areas facing risks — like places experiencing historic wildfires. Or drought. Or tornadoes or earthquakes. People keep living in those communities, too. And the risks keep building. 

But what Dovil knows from her research — and what Mauro knows from his own experience — is that we don’t make decisions about where to call home based on a simple risk analysis. It’s not that easy. 

(steady music begins)

There is so much that ties us to a place. And for many people, community is what helps you really belong. It’s a steadfast channel of connectivity and support.

For most of us, life is hard in one way or another. And Mauro is no exception. He works a lot. Two of his kids have autism. And he’s constantly thinking about the next hurricane. But he has his community. The community is what gets him through it all. And ultimately, it’s what makes the life he’s built on Ocracoke satisfying and meaningful.

WILLOW: That was Anmargaret Warner. Anmargaret was one of our interns in the fall of 2020. She’s now an associate producer at another podcast production company, and I couldn’t be more proud of her!

If you enjoyed this episode, I have a special treat for you. In honor of Earth Day, we put together a playlist called “After the Storm.” It’s a collection of episodes from other podcasts that explore different angles to the questions we’ve been asking with this story. Questions of why we live where we live, in the face of natural disasters.

For example, we have episodes on the playlist that explore the concept of climate gentrification, and how that plays out in communities of color. Another episode looks at why construction is booming, in a neighborhood that could be mostly underwater within 80 years. Another story introduces us to a teenager in New York whose community is still struggling to rebuild, nearly a decade after Hurricane Sandy.

Those are just a few of the episodes on our playlist “After the Storm”. 

You can find the full playlist on Spotify or at our website, outtherepodcast.com. Again, it’s called “After the Storm.”

(music ends)

A quick reminder that applications for our summer internship are due April 30. You can find all the details at our website - outtherepodcast.com. Just click on our blog.

(Out There theme music plays)

That’s it for this episode. Our strategic advisor is Alex Eggerking. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Jessica Taylor is our advertising manager. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our interns are Forrest Wood and Cecily Mauran. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. Our theme music was written by Jared Arnold. And today’s episode was reported, written, and produced by Anmargaret Warner.

Happy Earth Day, and we’ll see you in two weeks.

(music ends)