Among the communities affected by Hurricane Helene is the village of Chimney Rock, North Carolina, which has been described as being “washed away.”
In a thread on X, Evan Donovan, a news anchor with WSOC-TV in Charlotte posted photos and videos showcasing the damage to the “tourist town.”
“The homes on the other side of the water from Chimney Rock Village have walls completely sheared off,” Donovan wrote in another post. “Some look like they’re about to fall in the water.”
Chimney Rock Village, which is located near Lake Lure, is where movies such as Dirty Dancing were filmed. As of 2022, the town had a population of over 200 people, according to census data.
As of 2022, Lake Lure had a population of more than 1,570, according to census data.
Ed Broyhill, who has a home located on the lake explained to Fox News that everything in the town had been “washed into the lake.”
“The saddest thing in the world is that a lot of the folks have etched out a living catering to tourism,” Broyhill told the outlet. “They have everything from hotels and motels and restaurants and nice stores and souvenir stores and clothing stores, and all of that was washed away. Every bit of it, all of it, was washed into the lake.”
Broyhill speculated that it could take “at least a year” to rebuild the tourist town, according to the outlet.
As of Monday evening, there were roughly 376,577 customers in western North Carolina still without power, according to poweroutage.us.
