Residents of Newport, Tennessee, have been ordered to evacuate the town “immediately” as heavy rainfall and flash flooding stemming from Hurricane Helene makes its way north.
Cocke County Mayor Rob Mathis wrote his Facebook page just before 3 p.m. EST Friday that the Waterville Dam “HAS SUFFERED A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE” and ordered the “EVACUATION ALL OF DOWNTOWN NEWPORT IMMEDIATELY.”
Mathis posted about half an hour later that he was declaring a state of emergency for the county, which is located roughly 60 miles east of Knoxville.
Well fuck, I’ve got family there.
It’s bad. I’m near the TN/VA/NC border and flooding is everywhere in a four hour radius. Interstates are shut down multiple places. Asheville area is a complete mess. I40 near TN/NC caved in. I have a coworker who had two members in her family that have list houses already.
Same, I work all over the tri-cities and it was a mess out there. They had to airlift 60 people off the Erwin hospital like Katrina. I know someone in Damascus who’s whole house up and floated down the creek, they got out with their clothes and some medicine and that’s it.