Beaufort County residents weathered five days of snow, ice and brutal cold. It was the first winter countywide emergency of its kind in a very long time.

For emergency management, there was a range of takeaways from the severe weather event, according to Chris Newkirk, Beaufort County’s operations chief of fire/emergency management.

On the plus side was people taking emergency management’s warnings seriously.

“Adhering to our recommendations of staying off the roads and just being safe in general, the public itself, I think, adhered to those warnings,” Newkirk said. “We’ve had some calls and, regrettably, quite a few fires in the past few days, but it was far less than some of our neighboring counties have experienced.”

Auxiliary heating sources were the unconfirmed cause of four house fires in the county: two singlewide mobile homes in Pinetown and Blounts Creek on Wednesday; a house fire on Beaver Dam Road on Saturday; and another at Clark’s Neck Road on Sunday night. Three of the fires were total losses; the Clark’s Neck Road attic fire was estimated by fire officials to be a 10-percent loss, according to Newkirk. A Monday morning fire in Bunyan Volunteer Fire Department’s district was another total loss, but the cause and location of that fire were unclear at the time of print.

Newkirk said another plus was NCDOT crews’ work clearing, and keeping clear, major roads throughout the five days.

“From what I have seen traveling through Pitt County and what I’ve gotten from phone calls with Onslow and Craven, our roads are in very good condition compared to surrounding counties,” Newkirk said.

On emergency management’s end, communication is the one thing Newkirk feels could have been improved.

“I see the need for improvements. I think we did a really good job talking locally, but we need better communication with neighboring counties and the state,” he said. “The amount of time we were taking to make sure we made phone calls, emails, was really almost overwhelming.”

Newkirk said it’s the larger picture that needs to be addressed next: while there was plenty of communication between county departments and phone calls to state emergency officials, there was a delayed process with inputing information into the state’s EOC database, which helps state officials see the larger picture of what’s happening in emergency situations across a larger region.

“I’m thinking of how can we streamline our processes to increase that communication,” Newkirk said.