Tennessee’s Waterville Dam Suffers ‘Catastrophic Failure’: What We Know

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.

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It is unclear what caused damage to the dam, although it comes as officials in eastern Tennessee have warned of devastating flooding in the area. Mathis wrote in a post earlier in the day Friday that “[a]ll county and city emergency resources are currently fully engaged in water rescue and evacuation operations.”

“We are still several hours from the expected high-water mark,” read the message, which Mathis posted at 11:32 a.m. EST. “If water is rising near you, PLEASE DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE WATER REACHES YOU. Make plans to escape BEFORE you need assistance.”

Newsweek reached out to Tennessee’s Emergency Management Agency via email on Friday for additional information.

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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 35 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, 4:46 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and background.