Displaying items by tag: french broad river
Updated Oct. 12: Helene: Recovery grinds along in Smokies, multiple major watersheds; questions arise about fate of Pigeon River sediment pollutants; major disaster averted at Waterville
Two weeks after epic floods, a far cry from normalcy; utility repairs continue; Del Rio still reels; Hot Springs limps; outpouring of help and mountain grit as battered communities take stock
This story will be updated.
The original story and updates continue below. We have been adding more images, videos, links, live or interactive graphs and specifics to our earlier reporting and updates.
GATLINBURG — Great Smoky Mountains National Park staff continue to assess the damage sustained by the country’s most-visited national park during Tropical Storm Helene. (The storm was at tropical storm strength when it struck the mountains Sept. 26-27, prompting a rare tropical-storm warning for Western North Carolina).
The Cataloochee and Big Creek areas on the North Carolina side in Haywood County were particularly hard-hit, and significant damage was reported to park cultural resources and road and bridge infrastructure. Those areas remain closed. Most roads and trails on the Tennessee side of the national park are open. Cataloochee is a valuable tourist draw during the fall rutting season of elk populations successfully reintroduced to the park in the 1990s.
Here’s an update from the National Park Service:
“The park experienced substantial damage, particularly in North Carolina, including Balsam Mountain, Big Creek and Cataloochee Valley.
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Updated Oct. 2: Helene hits the mountains: Death toll nears 200; factory scrutinized after worker deaths in Erwin; major roads and railroad links still cut; massive recovery underway; havoc in So. Appalachians
Helene fallout continues; hundreds still missing; at least 60 dead in NC; flooding and wind damage still widespread in Southern Appalachians; National Guard in action; land access, supplies, communications, water and power still spotty
This story will be updated.
The original story and updates continue below.
We have been adding more images, videos, links, live or interactive graphs and specifics to earlier updates, too. So, keep scrolling to glean them after touching the More… button. You may want to bookmark some of the interactive features for your own present and future use.
ERWIN — The death toll from Hurricane Helene climbed to at least 180 people on Wednesday, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States in 50 years with the exception of Hurricane Katrina, which claimed over 1,800 lives in 2005 in what was also a largely impoverished area.
In one-hard hit community in the mountains of northeast Tennessee, emotions grew high as Spanish-speaking family of missing loved ones accused first responders through an interpreter of showboating, classism and preferential rescues during a tense press conference broadcast live on X.
The mounting death toll and increasingly fruitless searches came as millions of people spent their sixth day without running water or power and an ad hoc army of first responders, volunteers and National Guard troops struggled to deliver life-saving supplies to communities throughout the Southern Appalachians that were cut off by the record breaking flash floods spawned by the storm.
In Erwin, a town of 6,000 in Unicoi County, officials confirmed that a criminal investigation had been launched into the conduct of a manufacturing company that was accused of forcing employees to keep working even as floodwaters rose to dangerous levels.
The alleged decision by the management team at Impact Plastics led to the deaths of at least two employees while four others remain missing, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has been tasked with determining whether there’s enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant criminal charges.
“At the request of First Judicial District Attorney General Steve Finney, TBI agents are investigating allegations involving Impact Plastics,” said TBI spokesperson Leslie Earhart in an e-mail exchange with Hellbender Press.
Earhart referred questions to Finney, who said “there will be no further comment from my office … until the investigation is complete.”
According to the company — which denied any wrongdoing — five employees and one contractor were lost while trying to leave the facility on Friday.
“When water began to cover the parking lot and the adjacent service road, and the plant lost power, employees were dismissed by management to return to their homes in time for them to escape the industrial park,” said a company press release. “At no time were employees told that they would be fired if they left the facility …. While most employees left immediately, some remained on or near the premises for unknown reasons.”
Several workers tried to escape the premises on a truck but were swept away when the vehicle overturned, according to the company.
“We are devastated by the tragic loss of great employees,” said Gerald O'Connor, who founded the company in Erwin in 1987. “Those who are missing or deceased, and their families are in our thoughts and prayers.”
A Spanish-speaking woman clutching a blown-up photo of a missing relative blasted Unicoi County Emergency Manager Jim Erwin through an interpreter.
“My daughter was screaming ‘help, help,’ but the people in the hospital were a bigger priority than she was. I want my daughter! I want my daughter,” she implored in Spanish, referencing the water and air evacuation of Unicoi Hospital on Friday morning.
Officials responded that the Unicoi County 911 dispatch center had received multiple requests for a timeline of Sept. 27 911 calls. They assured her the search continued, and that Erwin had visited with family of all the known missing.
Erwin, who said he was among those trapped at the hospital, appeared flustered for a moment at the woman’s insistent quest for answers, noting that the discussion, practically speaking, was not helping locate her missing daughter.
“If I was white and rich you would be looking for me,” the mother cried through the interpreter. “Labor workers never matter to you, because they work in a factory.”
Migrant laborers live throughout northeast Tennessee, working mainly in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Many have very limited resources, and already live within some of the poorest counties in the state.
Officials said Wednesday that Hurricane Helene killed 91 people in North Carolina, 36 in South Carolina, 25 in Georgia, 17 in Florida, 9 in Tennessee, and 2 in Virginia.
In Newport, the county seat of hard-hit Cocke County about 45 minutes east of Knoxville on I-40, hundreds of people lined up in parking lots or flocked to grocery stores in a desperate scramble to secure the basic necessities of survival.
As is often the case in such disasters, the storm was a vivid reminder of the value of being prepared for the unexpected.
The Jenkins family, who lives in the rural Cocke County community of Bybee, said the floods developed so quickly that most residents didn’t have enough time to prepare and those who did still weren’t fully prepared for such a powerful deluge.
“The aftermath was something out of an adventure or post-apocalyptic film,” said Tiffany Jenkins, who lives on Knob Creek Road with her husband, Steve, and his two children from a previous marriage.
“Cars standing on their front ends, bridges completely washed out, and no safe route to or from civilization,” she said. “Finding ways out of town was almost impossible in itself, even with intimate knowledge of the area and typical flood zones. The problem is this was not a typical flood.”
Most Cocke County residents are still without clean water thanks to damage to the area’s water treatment plant. The Jenkins, however, are grateful to have resources that allowed them to ride out the storm and even help their neighbors in the aftermath.
“Luckily, my family has well water, which allows us to fill jugs of water for our friends and anyone else who needs it who could get to us but couldn’t get to Newport, where they were giving away free supplies,” she said.
“My family bought a used generator we could not afford because emergency services warned us to be prepared to be without electricity for a week or longer, though the power outage only lasted about 24 hours for us personally.”
She added: “The big problem was, and still remains, the lack of city water services.”
According to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA), Cocke was one of 21 counties experiencing problems due to storm damage to their water treatment stations, 17 of which had been forced to issue Boil Water advisories.
Officials from TVA said that all dams in the affected region had been inspected and “were secure and stable.”
During the storm, the most severe crisis faced by TVA was the potential failure of the Nolichucky Dam, prompting authorities to repeatedly warn people living downstream about the potential for a cataclysmic dam failure.
“TVA’s River Forecast Center is monitoring all other tributaries in the impacted areas, where rivers are gradually returning to normal levels. The team is also working to manage downstream reservoirs, which are rising. TVA’s focus is on preventing additional flooding and moving water through the system to recover reservoir storage,” a statement posted on TVA’s website website said.
Large segments of the Appalachian Trail were shut down by the storms while the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina sustained “catastrophic damage,” which is still being assessed, according to the National Park Service.
In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Foothills Parkway East near Cosby and Lakeview Drive remain closed while park staff address storm damage.
“The National Park Service has deployed its Eastern Incident Management Team to assist parks in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina with damage assessments and recovery as conditions allow,” said a statement issued by the Park Service. “The team is coordinating with parks, FEMA, and other agencies on their actions.”
Here’s another look from the federal level
Normally a fairly prolific X user, Rep. Tim Burchett of Knoxville doesn’t represent the worst affected regions but flooding occurred within Knox County and down the road in Newport and other points along the Pigeon River and French Broad River, which joins the Holston to form the Tennessee River, which flows directly through Knoxville. He didn’t post about the disaster or offer any warnings or assistance until late Sept. 27, when his first reference to Hurricane Helene’s effect on the mountains was a repost of a user conflating flood relief and U.S. support of Ukraine. The worst flooding had occurred hours before. His only other post on that fateful day was another claim of pending election irregularities.
After a flurry of obligatory reposts of aid requests and resources; Burchett wrapped it up late Wednesday with a repost of a follower claiming FEMA was confiscating money and homes. He told the follower he had checked it out, and FEMA denies that is happening.
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Nov. 2: Celebrate fish at the bird park — Sturgeonfest 2024
This event was rescheduled from its original date.
KODAK — Take a break from football, grab the kayaks, get outside and join your friends and family for Sturgeonfest 2024 on the French Broad River!
The FREE celebration of the ancient fish, their lore and their future is set for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 2 at Seven Islands State Birding Park boat ramp.
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Release a baby sturgeon into the French Broad River!
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Enjoy food from Kennedy Grill Food Truck, Crave Food Truck, Giddy Up Coffee Truck, Central Creamery, and the King of Pops!
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Enjoy music by the Tennessee Stifflegs!
To put a fish in the water, reserve a FREE ticket for everyone in your party for a specific time slot.
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Ancient river, new threats: Water quality officials declare 19 miles of French Broad River in NC impaired by pollutants
Booming construction and development, combined with more frequent heavy rains and an aging stormwater system, continue to threaten the age-old Appalachian river
This story was originally published by Jason Sandford of the Ashevegas Hot Sheet.
ASHEVILLE — North Carolina water quality officials declared a 19-mile section of the French Broad River in Buncombe County as officially “impaired” because of fecal coliform levels found during recent testing. It’s a sobering alarm bell (though there have been plenty of warning signs, as you’ll see below.) In Asheville, interest in the river as an economic force and tourist destination has never been higher. (The confluence of the French Broad and Holston rivers forms the Tennessee River above Knoxville.)
The designation will come as no surprise to even casual observers of the wide, northward-flowing river. Often, it runs a chocolate brown color, a clear sign of the sediment and other pollutants running through the waterway.
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Bald eagles fly with the Tennessee angels who helped save them from extinction. We must keep them on the wing.
Is the bald eagle’s remarkable comeback fading down the stretch?
(Part one in a series)
It was a damp morning in early spring 2005 when Paul James and I met Linda Claussen at Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge along the French Broad River in east Knox County. Heavy rains had fallen through the night, but the clouds were beginning to break. As we walked down Kelly Lane toward the river the vocalized yearnings of thousands of chorus frogs could be heard singing from the soppy floodplain along the river. Spring was definitely here.
The refuge itself was the brainchild of Linda’s late husband, Pete. In the late 1990s, he formed the Seven Islands Foundation, a privately owned land conservancy, and began setting aside property to be protected and restored to a variety of natural habitats. Most of the acreage had recently been fescue pasture maintained for grazing livestock and hay production.