Tropical Storm Helene brought heavy rains, winds and misery to North Carolina on Friday after coming ashore in Florida late Thursday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane.
Much of the worst damage in North Carolina has centered on Asheville in Buncombe County, the largest population center in western counties and a major convergence point for creeks and rivers.
“There’s a lot of things underwater right now,” State Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, told Carolina Public Press. “They’re predicting this will be the worst flooding we’ve had in more than a century.”
“What we are seeing is unlike anything anyone alive has ever seen here in this area,” Buncombe County Manager Avril Pender said at a Friday morning press conference.
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At least two deaths in North Carolina have so far been attributed to the storm, Gov. Roy Cooper said at a press briefing Friday afternoon, one in a car collision in Catawba County and another in Charlotte after a tree struck a home.
He also acknowledged that fatalities are likely to rise as the storm and its aftermath continues and more information comes in from remote areas.
A mudslide on Tunnel Road in Asheville affected four homes, with victims unaccounted for and not clear count of how many people remained missing, Buncombe County Emergency Services Assistant Director Ryan Cole said at the county’s press conference.
Nationally, multiple news media reports have counted more than 45 deaths associated with Helene.
Some 879,000 residents across North Carolina were without power Friday, Cooper said. Duke Energy reported 107,134 of the company’s customers without power in Buncombe County early Friday, with more than 104,000 outages in Mecklenburg County.
Cooper said 290 roads were closed Friday morning, while also noting that every road in western counties should be considered closed for the time being.
More than 100 swift water rescues had been made across the state, Cooper said. According to Cole, 50 of those were in Buncombe County. At a later press conference Friday afternoon, said the number was up to 150 such rescues in Buncombe County.
Cooper’s major message to North Carolinians was to avoid travel when it is not safe.
“We’ve lost too many North Carolinians who’ve driven into floodwaters,” he said. “So turn around, don’t drown.”
Far to the east of the storm’s main path, outer bands triggered multiple tornado warnings, including an apparent tornado reported in Nash County in association with at least four injuries.
Lake Lure dam at risk
To the southeast in Rutherford County an imminent crisis long in the making was playing out, amid confusing mixed messages from county emergency officials.
Due to heavy rains from Helene, water was overtopping and flowing around the dam on Lake Lure at the town of the same name, causing the Broad River to rise rapidly on Friday.
“Dam failure imminent,” the Rutherford County EMS Facebook page reads. “Evacuate to higher ground immediately.”
Another post, two hours later: “Structural supports have been compromised but the dam wall is currently holding.”
Downstream in Boiling Springs in Cleveland County, major flooding is expected to crest at 8 p.m., reaching 21.4 feet. The water level hasn’t been recorded at more than 20 feet since 1940.
Anyone living downstream of the Lake Lure dam is under orders to evacuate immediately. Just three hours before the mandatory evacuation notice, however, Rutherford County emergency management told residents via Facebook that it was no longer safe to leave their homes. “Stay home!” their post read.
At 3:45 p.m. on Friday, the county issued a clarifying statement: “The Lake Lure Dam wall is holding, but water is flowing over and around it. Hwy 64/74 is impassable at Lattimore Road. Rutherford County has requested four high-clearance vehicles from the State EOC and is awaiting their arrival. Residents above Lattimore Road should shelter in place until evacuations can resume.”
In 2018, CPP reported on the need for major repairs on the Lake Lure dam after many years of neglect by the town, ignoring multiple warnings from state officials.
In a hopeful sign at 6 p.m. Friday, the county issued a statement saying lake levels were no longer increasing and had begun to recede. The county said emergency personnel there had rescued more than 25 people through swift water rescue, EMS, fire departments, and law enforcement efforts.
How we got here
Western North Carolina had already been pummeled by heavy rains and local flooding earlier in the week as outer bands from Helene began generating high rainfall totals on Thursday, along with strong winds.
By early Friday, Helene had dropped to tropical storm strength based on central windspeed, but was still a massive storm as it moved through Georgia near the South Carolina line, with powerful outer bands extending across much of North Carolina.
These outer bands kicked up intense thunderstorms and tornadoes far from the storm’s center, which continued to move north.
By midmorning, the storm had crossed into Western North Carolina near Clay, Graham and Macon counties and continued moving to the northwest into Tennessee. This was a much more eastern course than had been predicted a day earlier, when the National Hurricane Center’s central track for its forecast took Helene into southeastern Tennessee, only skirting the edge of North Carolina.
All of these circumstances combined to create a situation ripe for unprecedented flooding in much of the North Carolina mountains.
By 2 p.m. Friday, was near the Tennessee-Kentucky state line as a tropical depression, continuing to move to the northwest.
Coping with Helene
A disaster of this magnitude is affecting everything in the worst-hit areas, including travel, power, communications and access to health care.
Forecasts for river flooding include pretty much every portion of western North Carolina county. NOAA’s called for major flooding on the Pigeon River in Haywood County and all along the French Broad, including Madison and Transylvania counties.
Ashe, Burke, Caldwell, Cleveland, Gaston, Macon, McDowell, Swain, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yadkin counties are also experiencing moderate to major riverine flooding, NOAA said.
Buncombe County officials described major riverine flooding along the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers. The water level of the Swannanoa has already surpassed the previous record high of 20.7 feet and is expected to crest today around 27 feet.
The last comparable flood happened in 1916, when several straight days of rainfall preceded a hurricane that made landfall in South Carolina days later. This is a similar situation, as heavy rainfall unrelated to Helene caused the water levels on the French Broad to breach the flood stage early Thursday morning.
Buncombe County issued a warning that a landslide had blocked all lanes if Interstate 40 east of the Ridgecrest exit at Old Fort Mountain, near the McDowell County line. This section of road is a major artery for travel and freight between the mountains and the rest of the state.
The town of Woodfin, on the French Broad River in northern Buncombe County, expressed concern about its water system. The Woodfin Sanitary Water and Sewer District asked customers to conserve water while repairs take place over the next few days, according to a statement from Buncombe County.
Reports from residents on Friday described entire low-lying neighborhoods along the rivers with water up to the rooftops of homes, including in Swannanoa, just east of Asheville.
Later Friday afternoon, officials the city of Asheville announced a 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. curfew to last the next few days.
Buncombe County’s emergency shelter at WNC Agricultural Center was accommodating about 150 people and has a 500-person capacity, county officials said Friday afternoon. Harrah’s Cherokee Center in downtown Asheville was nearly at capacity with more than 400 people. The county was working to open a third emergency shelter at Asheville–Buncombe Technical Community College.
Later, county officials said they would begin directing evacuees to the Ag Center and away from Harrah’s, with plans to open a new shelter on Saturday.
Friday evening, a statement from Buncombe County described the scope of the emergency situation there: “Our emergency services crews have responded to more than 3,300 calls since 5 a.m. Friday, and crews must prioritize life-saving missions. While we are actively going through the calls logged in our 911 system to track rescues. Multiple cell towers are down, but texts to 911 are starting to come through.”
Outside the population center in Buncombe County, conditions across western counties were also serious.
In Haywood County, the sheriff’s office told residents via Facebook to consider all roads closed. “Do not try to drive,” the post reads. “Do not go in the water. Climb to higher ground to evacuate.” Transylvania and Macon counties have issued similar warnings.
I-40 in northern Haywood County headed into Tennessee closely parallels the course of the flooded Pigeon River and crosses many of its normally smaller tributaries. The Department of Transportation reported the highway closed through this area due to multiple issues including a mudslide about four miles from the state line. Unconfirmed reports indicated one of the interstate bridges in the area had partially collapsed.
In Henderson County, all lanes of Interstate 26 was closed at mile marker 51 due to downed trees. Spartanburg Highway near Corsica Lane was closed due to a landslide.
“We’ve had wind gusts and a lot of rain,” Macon County public health communications director Jennifer Germaine told CPP. “I was able to get to work, and my house was fine. But there are areas of the county right by rivers, and I’m sure those areas are not so good.”
To the east and north, Rutherford, Watauga and Caldwell counties each announced 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. curfews, similar to the one in Asheville.
UNC Health Pardee urgent care clinics in Brevard, Fletcher, Hendersonville and Mills River were closed Friday, as were the Hendersonville hospital’s outpatient clinics and specialist locations. The hospital’s main emergency department remained open.
Duke LifePoint’s hospitals across Western NC remain operational, though many are operating on emergency backup power, according to Lifepoint Health communications director Liz Harris.
Helene’s effect on agriculture isn’t clear yet, but is expected to be severe.
Steve Duckett, who oversees cooperative extension offices in Western North Carolina, told CPP that there will be widespread damage to agriculture in the region. “It will be a number of days before we have any kind of handle on the impact,” Duckett said.
Local agriculture officials told CPP earlier in the week that the harvest of corn and apples would be jeopardized.
FEMA credited North Carolina officials with effective readiness for the storm.
FEMA Deputy Administrator Erik Hooks said during a press conference earlier today that North Carolina Emergency Director William Ray and Gov. Cooper have been “well postured,” to deal with Helene, adding that FEMA has staged additional search and rescue teams in the western part of the state. The National Guard is also activated in affected parts of the state.
During that same press conference, National Weather Service Director Ken Graham said he had received reports of about two feet of rain at Mount Mitchell in Yancey County, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.
Graham said residents of Western North Carolina should stay mindful of potential dangers even after the rainfall slows down.
“We have saturated soil all around portions of Western North Carolina, so even those afternoon showers can really cause some flash flooding,” he said. “So we’re not quite done yet.”
Jane Winik Sartwell, Lucas Thomae and Frank Taylor contributed to this report.
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