People in central North Carolina continue to deal with the aftermath left behind after Tropical Storm Chantal devastated the area on Sunday, which left three people dead.
“I want to reiterate, as everyone has, our deep sorrow for the people who lost their lives over the weekend,” Gov. Josh Stein said at Tuesday’s Council of State meeting. “At this point, there are three deaths that have been reported in the media, one of whom is the mother of Dan Hirschman, Sandra Hirschman (of Pittsboro). Dan was a colleague of mine at the Department of Justice for eight years and is now general counsel at the Department of Environmental Quality. Just truly heartbreaking, and the deaths in Texas, particularly that camp, break our hearts, and that just underscores that we have to be there for each other.”
He said the state has offered assistance to Texas, which saw up to 20 inches of rain in the early morning hours of July 4, causing the Guadalupe River, outside of San Antonio, to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes. More than 100 people have died, including 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic.
Back in North Carolina, states of emergency have been declared in Alamance, Person, Moore, and Orange counties. Over 120 roads were closed due to flooding from the storm.
Various bodies of water rose to historic levels across the Piedmont, causing extensive damage. In Alamance County, the Haw River crested at 32.5 feet, the second-highest level on record, just below Hurricane Fran in 1996, which crested at 32.83 feet.
The Eno River in Orange County reached a new record height, cresting at 25.63 feet.
Stein, a Democrat, said he was heading to Alamance County right after the meeting to survey the damage, including water and wastewater treatment systems.
“I’ve heard that at least one community has a boil advisory, Hillsborough, and others have been working to connect their city systems to neighboring city systems, which they have emergency measures to do so,” he told reporters after the meeting. “Part of why I want to go out there is to understand the extent of the infrastructural damage to water and wastewater systems and the roads, see how extensive that damage is. I’ve talked with a couple of the sheriffs over the weekend and they were saying there were some communities essentially disconnected from the roadways, so part of what we have to do at this point is just to assess what is the scale of the damage and what can we do to help people recover.”
The governor said there would be enough money to repair the roads, bridges, and other damage caused by Chantal despite the large amount of money already being spent on recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina.
Carolina Journal caught up with Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler after the meeting and asked about the situation for farmers in the area.
“We took a tour yesterday, about two hours through Rockingham, Alamance, and Chatham counties,” he said. “A lot of water, but it’s mostly infrastructure damage. We’re going to have some crop losses, no question. We saw places where water got out of the rivers, that kind of thing, but not like what we have seen in the past; it wasn’t widespread enough. I wouldn’t call it catastrophic.”
The post Stein: Funds will be available for Chantal cleanup, amid ongoing Helene recovery first appeared on Carolina Journal.
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Author: Theresa Opeka
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