Residents of Newport, Tennessee, were ordered to evacuate immediately on Friday as heavy rainfall and flash flooding from Hurricane Helene moved north, causing widespread devastation.
Cocke County Mayor Rob Mathis announced on Facebook just before 3 p.m. EST that the Waterville Dam had suffered a “CATASTROPHIC FAILURE,” prompting the evacuation of all downtown Newport.
The dam’s failure followed warnings of severe flooding across eastern Tennessee, where emergency teams were fully engaged in water rescues and evacuations.
Mathis declared a state of emergency for Cocke County shortly after the evacuation order, advising residents to act quickly. “If water is rising near you, PLEASE DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE WATER REACHES YOU,” he urged in a message earlier in the day.
Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm, has left a trail of destruction across the Southeastern United States. As of Friday afternoon, over 1.2 million people in South Carolina and 900,000 in Georgia were without power, with Tennessee also experiencing significant outages.
Officials have confirmed at least 35 storm-related deaths across four states. Dom Lucre shared shocking footage of floodwaters engulfing homes in eastern Tennessee, underscoring the region’s dire situation following the dam’s collapse.
🔥🚨BREAKING NEWS: A flash flood emergency has been declared in Eastern Tennessee, water is filling homes an hour after the reports of the Waterville Dam failing. pic.twitter.com/qBrsg5Yz2t
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) September 27, 2024
