Hurricane Helene plowed through the N.C. mountains Friday, shutting the region down and leaving thousands without power, with some counties urging evacuations.
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for Rutherford County, east of Asheville, saying around 11 a.m. that a failure at the Lake Lure Dam was imminent and people below the dam should move to higher ground.
By late Friday afternoon, water had crested the dam, but it was continuing to hold despite the structural damage, according to Josh Kastrinsky, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.
More than a million Duke Energy customers in North Carolina were without power Friday morning, according to an outage map.
www.yahoo.com/news/catastrophic-flooding-imminent-evacuations-urged-153836353.html
As Helene weakens, the now-tropical storm’s strong winds and heavy rain continue to wreak havoc across the Southeast U.S., including in North Carolina where at least one county has ordered evacuations.
Rutherford County’s Emergency Management ordered residents who live on certain roads to evacuate to higher areas due to water overtopping the Lake Lure Dam, according to a Facebook post shared by the government office Friday morning.
Emergency officials warned in a 6 p.m. ET Facebook post that Lake Lure Dam water levels are now receding. Emergency personnel have rescued more than 25 people through “swift water rescue.”
Hours earlier the department said water was “cresting the Dam and flowing around the side walls,” emergency management said on Facebook.
“Structural supports have been compromised but the Dam wall is currently holding,” according to the post. “Evacuations have occurred from the Dam to Island Creek Road. Evacuation sirens are sounding downstream of the Dam. Emergency personnel are working with the structural engineers and are going house to house to ensure all citizens have been evacuated. Evacuees are being transported temporarily to Ingles in Lake Lure.”
www.yahoo.com/news/north-carolina-floods-failure-lake-160414146.html