LAKE LURE, N.C. — It’s hard to forget the images from Lake Lure following the destruction of Hurricane Helene. Over 22 inches of rain fell across the Lake Lure Dam watershed, leading to catastrophic damage to the town and surrounding areas.
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“We had water getting funneled down through, it was coming around, over top of the bridges here, carrying with it that construction debris, businesses from up in Chimney Rock,” said Dustin Waycaster, Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director for the town of Lake Lure. “We had campers, cars, propane tanks.”
Waycaster told Channel 9’s Danielle Miller he had no idea how bad it would be.
“This storm was just so unprecedented, like, even with that plan in place, it was flooding and debris that we’ve never had to deal with before,” he said.
Eight months later, Lake Lure Mayor Carol Pritchett says the town has made significant strides in rebuilding.
“We’re trying to make sure that as we repair the damage that was done from this disaster, we’re also doing whatever we can to make it better, so that the next time we won’t have this much disaster,” Pritchett said.
One thing that’s been a constant during recovery efforts in Lake Lure is the US Army Corps of Engineers, which estimates that 1 million cubic yards of debris still needs to be removed from the lake. That’s about the amount of 300 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Along with dredging Lake Lure, Mayor Pritchett says there are plans to widen where the Broad River meets the lake.
“It was sort of like a nozzle when everything came down the river and shot it out with such great force. So just by widening some of that would slow that down and that would just be a huge, that would be a huge improvement,” Pritchett said.
The Lake Lure Dam is also a central part of recovery efforts. While the 100-year-old dam itself did not fail during the storm, Mayor Pro-Tem Dave DiOrio says the town is working on plans to replace it so it can even better handle future weather events.
“Time moves on and we know more about weather patterns and we know more about the potential for flooding and this dam just doesn’t meet the normal, modern standards of what we’d want with a dam both with capacity to absorb a flood,” said DiOrio.
Helene’s flooding rain not only put a spotlight on the need for a stronger dam, but also the need for a better protected communications infrastructure.
The town built emergency sirens after the flood of 1996. Jim Proctor watched that flood from his backyard and says they’ve learned even more since then about how important the lake is for communication in western North Carolina.
“The main trunk line for internet and telephone between Charlotte and Asheville goes through the Hickory Nut Gorge; 90% of the connectivity between Charlotte and Asheville went away from Helene,” Proctor said.
Proctor says plans are in place to bury new lines in the roads that are being constructed and to reset emergency management towers so they don’t wash away during a flood. The town also hopes to build a new cell tower, so people can stay in touch during these big weather events.
“We’ll build it back and it’s coming back, but it’s just a process we gotta work through,” Waycaster said.
(VIDEO: Lake Lure Dam no longer at imminent risk of failure, officials say)
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