BELHAVEN — As Tropical Storm Hermine plowed up the East Coast over the weekend, the Belhaven area escaped with relatively little damage.

Not everyone came out unscathed, however.

“It was enough to say we had a storm,” town Manager Woody Jarvis said. “We had water in a few of the businesses on Main Street.”

Jarvis said there were still the remnants of standing water on Monday, but a lot of the water began receding Saturday afternoon.

“The ground’s having to absorb 6 or 7 inches of rainwater, whether it’s raining or not,” he said. “It’s just having to dry out naturally.”

Jimmie Southerland, owner of The Tavern at Jack’s Neck on Pamlico Street, said she personally had little cleanup to do after the storm, but some of the downtown businesses weren’t so lucky.

Attic Life, Market 32 and the new Belhaven Community Chamber of Commerce location experienced flooding, to name a few.

Southerland said she closed The Tavern Friday night as the storm neared for safety reasons, but was able to reopen as early as Saturday.

“The nice thing about this is that it was moving relatively fast,” Jarvis said of Hermine. “It could’ve been worse.”

He said Belhaven residents with property damage had to accept it as part of living in a low-lying area and got to work cleaning up this weekend.

Diana Lambeth, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, said the organization’s location on East Main Street saw about 5 or 6 inches of water flooding into the building.

Lambeth said they were able to move a lot of property up to the attic before the flooding began, but the carpet had to be torn up and is being replaced this week.

“It’s a mess,” she said. “We knew when we moved in we’d have to deal with it.”

The building’s owner sent in professionals to pump out the water and set up dehumidifiers to dry out the rest, according to Lambeth.

“We’re doing just fine. We’re doing the best we can,” she said.

Belhaven residents will likely see standing water through the week, but the area is now mostly in the clear after Hermine.

“We were very fortunate that it was not any worse than it was,” Jarvis said.