Comment |
More than 1,000 state prisoners are
working across coastal and eastern North Carolina today
helping to clean up damage left by Hurricane Bonnie. State prison managers work with state Emergency Management, Marine and Agriculture officials to put work crews where they are needed the most. There are 102 minimum-security community work squads assigned to the clean up. Those crews include some prisoners temporarily moved from Caldwell, Catawba and Wilkes correctional centers and the Dan River Prison Work Farm to eastern North Carolina to assist in the clean-up. Sixty-one of the crews are helping communities clean up debris. The work crews have been hard at work clearing debris at Topsail Beach, Emerald Isle, Pine Knoll Shores, Cape Carteret and Newport "They are picking up boards and other debris that have littered the beaches and clearing ditches filled with debris that’s slowed the flow of water." said Duncan Daughtry, superintendent at Carteret Correctional Center. "They’re helping shovel the debris homeowners have left along the street into city trucks for removal." Daughtry says they have cleaned the grounds of Carteret Community College and Carteret Community Hospital. Six prisoner work crews from Bladen Youth Center are spread out along the southeastern coast helping to clean up Boiling Springs, Calabash, Long Beach, Ocean Isle, Sunset Beach and Yaupon Beach. "We’re working with the cities, picking up debris that had been piled by the roadside," said Sgt. Butch McMillan of the Bladen prison. "The townspeople and town manager say they’re well pleased with the work. One town manager said he would like to put in a two week order for the inmate labor." The prisoner work crews have been working today in Beaufort, Bladen, Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Currituck, Dare, Hyde, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender, Perquimans and Tyrrell counties. Forty-one of the crews are helping farmers whose tobacco crops were blown down by hurricane winds. State Agriculture officials are directing prison work crews to help farmers upright fallen tobacco plants so they can be harvested. The work is being done under Governor Hunt’s State of Emergency declaration. These crews are working in Cumberland, Halifax, Harnett, Johnston, Jones, Robeson, Wake and Wilson counties. -bp- |
