Tennessee’s Waterville Dam ‘Breached’ as Evacuation Continues

Residents of Newport, Tennessee, have been ordered to evacuate as heavy rainfall and flash flooding stemming from Hurricane Helene makes its way north.
Cocke County Mayor Rob Mathis first alerted residents to leave the Newport area, roughly 60 miles west of Knoxville, in a post to Facebook just before 3 p.m. EST Friday, writing that the Waterville Dam had “suffered a catastrophic failure.”
In a following update to Facebook, nearly 3 hours later, Mathis said the dam had been “breached, but not catastrophic as of last report.”
“This news has bought us some time. The evacuation is still on effect,” Mathis wrote. “Water levels continue to rise and are expected to rise several more feet.”
Duke Energy told Newsweek over email as well Friday evening that “all gates open at the Waterville Dam and continues to pass water through the dam,” adding that the company “can confirm that both the dam and our floodgates are performing as expected.”
“Hurricane Helene produced historic rainfall over the past 48 hours across much of the Carolinas,” read the statement from Duke Energy. “We urge people living along our lakes and rivers or in flood-prone areas to use caution, stay informed and follow the directions of state and county emergency management.”
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Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida late Thursday night as a Category 4 storm, has left a path of destruction while passing through the Southeastern United States as a tropical depression.
The storm has left downed trees and caused power outages throughout several states as of Friday afternoon. The site PowerOutage.us says over 1.2 million residences and businesses are without power in South Carolina, and over 900,000 customers are in the dark in Georgia. In Tennessee, over 100,000 customers were without power as of 4:06 p.m. EST.
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Officials have reported at least 40 storm-related deaths across four states—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina—as of Friday afternoon, according to the Associated Press. The National Hurricane Center tracked the eye of Helene above eastern Tennessee at 11 a.m. EST Friday. By 8 p.m. EST Saturday, the storm is expected to reach western Kentucky.
Meteorologists at the National Weather Service (NWS) alerted residents in Rutherford County, North Carolina, to evacuate the area earlier in the day Friday over concerns that the Lake Lure Dam was at risk of failure.
“URGENT: FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY FOR THE LAKE LURE DAM! DAM FAILURE IMMINENT! RESIDENTS BELOW THE DAM NEED TO EVACUATE TO HIGHER GROUND IMMEDIATELY!” read an alert from the NWS’s office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, Friday at around 11 a.m. EST.
Rutherford County is in western North Carolina, about 130 miles southeast of Cocke County in Tennessee.
Update 9/27/24, 8:17 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and comment from Duke Energy.