By Dylan Henson | WNCW
September 22, 2026
SPINDALE, NC (WNCW) Two years after Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina, newly detailed accounts from the storm's first hours show how close a Lake Lure dam came to failing and how completely Buncombe County's 911 system broke down — details at the center of "Higher Ground", a three-part WNCW special report marking the anniversary of the storm.
Part 1 focuses on the two communities' first 24 hours: Buncombe County, where emergency officials had to warn a quarter million people their homes were no longer safe, and Lake Lure, an hour and a half away, where the dam holding back the
town's namesake lake took on damage before it held — "by the grace of God," in Mayor Carol Pritchett's words.
A 911 SYSTEM OVERWHELMED
Lillian Govus, Buncombe County's director of communications and public engagement, had handled crisis communications for years. Nothing, she says, compared to Helene.
"I've never experienced anything like what I experienced in that emergency operations center," Govus said.
Govus and her colleague, Stacey Wood, the county's communications manager and public information officer, issued a mandatory evacuation order that morning using a geo-targeted emergency alert system, similar to an Amber Alert, that reached every phone in the evacuation corridor — the first time either had to tell people their own homes weren't safe.
As the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers rose, Buncombe County's water and phone infrastructure failed, and 911 itself became overwhelmed. Requests for help began arriving through Facebook Messenger and a government email inbox normally reserved for complaints. Among them: a report of a landslide that trapped a man against his own home — his 6-year-old daughter beside him, and no access to the medication he needed as an organ transplant recipient — and a message from a woman whose father was stranded on a campground rooftop. Swiftwater crews reached him; his girlfriend did not survive.
"Suddenly we were not doing traditional communications," Govus said. "We were there trying to help as many people as possible."
To describe the scale of the flooding, Govus points to a comparison a meteorologist made to her directly: the volume of water pouring from the North Fork Reservoir into the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers was similar to Niagara Falls, sustained for more than eight hours. Days of heavy rain before Helene arrived had already saturated the ground, officials say, contributing to the deadly landslides that followed.
"If we were to pitch this to a Hollywood filmmaker," Govus said, "I think they'd tell us it's preposterous. ... But it's kind of what happened."
By the following Sunday, the county had moved its emergency operations center to a larger site to make room for mutual aid pouring in from FEMA, the New York City Fire Department and other agencies.
A DAM ON THE EDGE
An hour and a half away, Lake Lure faced its own reckoning. The hundred-year-old dam holding back the lake — the town's economic center — was damaged during the storm, and residents received an emergency notification warning of its possible failure.
"We are so grateful that during the hurricane the dam held, "Pritchett said. "And that was, you know, by the grace of God."
The town had, by chance, tested a newly installed warning-siren system just three days before Helene hit. Since the storm, Lake Lure has added an Everbridge alert system that reaches residents by phone call, text, and email, and a previously planned dam safety upgrade — a new discharge valve — is now complete.
Dustin Waycaster, the town's emergency services director, says the storm exposed the same communications breakdown Buncombe County faced.
"One of the huge hurdles that we had to overcome during the storm was communications," Waycaster said.
The town has since added mobile Starlink units, and a new AT&T cell tower — originally sought so paramedics could consult emergency room doctors remotely during medical calls in the remote Hickory Nut Gorge area — became critical post-storm infrastructure.
THE PRICE OF RECOVERY
The financial toll is still being counted. The Army Corps of Engineers spent what Pritchett estimated at "hundreds of millions of dollars" removing more than 1.2 million tons of sediment and hundreds of thousands of tons of debris from the lake — work the town calls its first and most critical milestone, completed in May.
Beyond that project, Lake Lure has received about $9 million in federal reimbursement, much of it for costs already paid, plus $27.4 million in state and private grants. Another $4 million has been promised but not yet paid. The town has spent roughly $2.5 million of its own reserves to keep contractors paid while waiting on federal funding.
Bigger bills are still coming: an estimated $35 million to $40 million to relocate the town's wastewater treatment plant out of a flood zone (the town happened to close on the new site two weeks before Helene hit), $100 million to $135 million for a new sewer collection system, and roughly $150 million in dam repairs — none of it yet approved.
"For a town of 1,400 people," Pritchett said, "this is just a huge amount of money."
Despite the cost, Lake Lure recorded no deaths and few displaced residents, which Pritchett and Waycaster credit to proactive warnings and door-to-door welfare checks by the town's police and fire departments.
WHAT CARRIED THEM THROUGH
Officials in both communities point to relationships as much as infrastructure. Wood says mutual-aid ties between counties — including Haywood and Henderson counties — have grown "by 1,000%" since the storm. In Lake Lure, Waycaster credits lessons learned fighting the Party Rock fire for the town's ability to lean on outside help, including a Durham fire engine crew that ran routine calls so local crews could focus on rescues, and search-and-rescue task forces from Pamlico County, FEMA, and New York's police and fire departments.
In Buncombe County, so-called Community Care Stations became gathering points for people without water or power — offering laundry, showers, potable water and warm shelter through an unusually cold winter. Wood says the demand for showers and laundry, more than anything else, showed the scale of need.
"When you go somewhere else to take a shower," Wood said, "that's really telling you something."
Govus says what has stayed with her isn't the damage.
"The people who didn't live here who showed up to help us — that level of care and compassion and unity was really the thing that, at the end of the day, made my heart feel a little bit fuller," Govus said.
WHAT'S NEXT
Part 2 of Higher Ground profiles the linemen who raced to restore power after the storm, and goes inside a power company confronting its worst infrastructure damage on record.
