The town of Boone was hit hard by the remnants of Tropical Storm Helene which dumped more than a foot of rain across much of the western part of the state. Soil that was already saturated gave way to falling trees across the region causing power outages in Boone that impacted nearly 80 percent of its residents. And the massive flooding that ensued turned major roads into fast-flowing rivers. Boone Mayor Tim Futrelle spoke with WFDD's David Ford over the weekend about assessing the damage and where the town goes from here.
Interview Highlights
On when the town knew this was going to be a more serious weather event:
We really started recognizing that we had a situation probably Thursday, when we saw that it was going to be coming closer to us, right over us. And we got our team together. We have our emergency management coordinator now, who we just hired on this past year. Very thankful for that. And so all of us coming together is really what made this as manageable as it has.
On the town's preparations:
Well, we Thursday, we set up a command center, which is out where our Sheriff's Department is. We were working with our emergency response teams. We're very thankful to have folks from the state here that were helping us as well our Emergency Coordinator for the town of Boone and our Emergency Coordinator for Watauga County, we've done all of our services together, and we're all in one room, and that made a huge difference communication wise, as far as us being able to respond and assess, and I feel sure that a lot of lives were saved simply because of being able to address what needed to happen in real time, because we were all just right there in the same room together.
On what stands out in terms of the devastation:
Highway 105, highway 321, those are two of our main arteries that are flooded out, and we're experiencing a lot of congestion and debris there from trees falling and water damage, landslide runoff. For example, we've got a whole shopping center, the whole OUR Walmart shopping center, that whole area there as has flooded out, and Walmart will probably be recuperating for a little while there. Unfortunately, downtown was also hit hard. I've never thought I'd see a river running down King Street, but unfortunately, that is exactly what we saw. And just thinking a lot about our small business owners and our folks that are the backbone of our community that help keep us thriving. We're going to need a lot of help to support them as well to recover and rebuild.
On where water levels were as of Saturday morning:
Most
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of the flooding has receded. We do still have some roads that are cut off, roads that have bridges and some water access, that are that are still flooded over, but we of course, have those blocked off so folks can stay safe there. But thanks, the weather has opened up for us and given us the opportunity to really better assess what it is exactly that we're looking at. We still have some areas we still haven't been able to get out to. We still have some folks that don't have water or power, and so those, of course, are critical areas that we need to address. But we're going to get out to those folks. We're going to be able to get around a little more and see what exactly the damage is, hopefully a little more in full, and then we're going to go from there. We're definitely going to need help from the state and the federal government, though, in order to get ourselves back on track from where
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we were,