‘There’s just nothing left.’ Helene wipes out Chimney Rock’s Main Street

And then worse than the worst happened, as a wall of water came rushing down the Broad River, wiping out most of the structures along Main Street — and Main Street itself — in the Village of Chimney Rock,

and straining the dam that holds back Lake LureCharlotte City Council member Tariq Bokhari went to the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area on Sunday, Sept. 29th, 2024. He posted this video on X saying about the destruction from Hurricane Helene:

“…never seen anything like this. Post apocalyptic. It’s so overwhelming you don’t even know how to fathom what recovery looks like, let alone where to start. Going to be a long path to recovery that all levels of stakeholders are going to be needed.” By Tariq

For a while on Friday morning, it looked as if Chimney Rock and Lake Lure had been spared the worst of Hurricane Helene. And then worse than the worst happened, as a wall of water came rushing down the Broad River, wiping out most of the structures along Main Street — and Main Street itself — in the Village of Chimney Rock, and straining the dam that holds back Lake Lure.

“I’ve never seen concentrated damage like we’ve seen here,” said Chris Murray, an emergency manager in Pamlico County who came to help lead teams of rescuers as soon as Rutherford County could send an S.O.S. “There’s nothing left.”Townspeople and visitors awoke Friday morning after a restless night to more of what they had seen the day before: tree branches falling in heavy rain and wind as the remains of what became Tropical Storm Helene cut through Western North Carolina. Power had been out since Thursday. Tracy Stevens had left her house in Chimney Rock Thursday night and gotten a room at the Lake Lure Inn, which had a generator and was staying open through the storm. The two towns, both popular tourist destinations, are walking distance to one another, joined by a bridge across the Broad River in the mountains of Rutherford County. “I got up around 7 and went down to the lobby and got a cup of coffee,” Stevens said. “I was looking at the lake out the window of the inn, and I thought, Is that all? OK. This is not so bad.”