A storm last week brought historic rainfall to parts of North Carolina, and residents in Brunswick County are trying to figure out how to fix their flooded homes.

Chuck Hulbert has spent a lot of time this week waiting outside of his home in Leland, North Carolina. Last week's storm brought several feet of water outside his garage and into his home.

You can smell the moisture that caused damage outside his door. But the storm also took something special from him. 

Hulbert is a widower, and his wife’s cookbooks are gone. “It’s a mess in there,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve lost some pictures. Probably lost some Christmas stuff. I’ve lost my wife’s cookbooks.”

You can see the the line for how high the water rose outside his home. He said it was over 3 feet high near his garage door.

Hulbert's neighbor in the Stony Creek Plantation neighborhood, Tom Meyer, is also confronting a tremendous amount of water damage to his home. It’s the second time he’s had to deal with something like this. In 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded him out.

“This is my retirement. I have nothing but the equity in this house,” Meyer said. “And now, I’m going to have no equity in this house because nobody’s ever going to want to buy it.”

So, for Hulbert and his neighbors, the waiting continues.

“It’s sad,” Hulbert said. “My next door neighbor there, they lost a car. They had more water in their house that I did. And it’s just sad to watch people’s dreams and memories go down the drain.”

A meeting about storm recovery is going to be held on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at the Leland Town Hall at 6 p.m.