News

Lake Lure dam could be at risk

By Carolina Public Press, Published: September 27, 2024

Some 879,000 residents across North Carolina were without power Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference Friday. 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.

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.”

Lake Lure dam at risk

At Lake Lure, 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.”

Anyone living downstream of the Lake Lure dam was 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!” the post read.

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.

Worst flooding in a century

Western North Carolina had already been pummeled by heavy rains and local flooding earlier in the week before 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.

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 could be jeopardized.