Hurricane Florence has brought parts of Brownsboro to a halt, which has impacted roads, businesses and neighborhoods. A set of three houses, though, are dealing with an issue they thought they had avoided.
Gary Holifield, Kenneth Giddens and Mike Wallace all live in Goldsboro and lived next to each other on Black Jack Church Road.
"We get along good," Giddens said. "We get along good together. All of us do."
Giddens is 72 years old and has lived in his Goldsboro house for 32 years. He said the location of their three houses is the lowest point on the road, making it susceptible to flooding.
"It all kind of dips down to here," Giddens said.
Holifield said the worst part of Florence came this past weekend -- but their houses didn't get any flooding.
"We thought we kind of made it through," Holifield said. "We went to bed Sunday night, and the next thing I knew, we woke up in the morning and pretty much all three of these houses were flooded up."
All the rain that came down during Florence left sitting water all around their three houses, so then as the storm moved away from Goldsboro, that water trickled down into their homes.
"At that point, I guess the rain water could not go anywhere else but our houses," Holifield said. "It's not a good deal for anybody."
This has been especially difficult for Wallace, who recently had a bad accident right before the storm hit. Last Thursday, Wallace was exiting the highway when a car started to drive at him from the wrong direction.
"He came in and hit me head on," Wallace said.
Now with a broken leg in a cast, Wallace was left with a flooded house and no easy way of getting around. He said even though this was a tough situation to find himself in, he couldn't have asked for two better neighbors to help him out.
"Thank God for my neighbors," Wallace said. "Good guys right there."
Some other Goldsboro neighbors lent these three men some pumps to start getting out the water because they needed to work quickly.
"Right off the bat, there started to be bugs trying to come in the house," Holifield said. "The air condition is busted underneath and the foundation needs to dry out."
Holifield and Giddens decided to go rent two other big pumps to speed up the process.
"The quicker we get this water out, the better," Holifield said.
"I'm going to have to tear everything out from underneath my house," Giddens said. "Air conditioning is gone. Vents are gone. Everything. We want to move as quickly as possible."
Since they started pumping, these three say they have gotten about half of the water out from underneath their house. They said the next few days will likely be spent trying to get the water out of their backyards. If they can keep up their current pace, they said they hope to have dry lawns, backyards and houses by Monday morning.
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