Carolina Beach mayor warns people to stay out of floodwaters

AccuWeather

Flooding remains after an incredible amount of rain fell in a short time in Carolina Beach, and the town's mayor is urging people to stay safe in the aftermath.

Transcript

00:00The town of Carolina Beach was hit by well over a foot of rainfall during this unnamed tropical

00:06rainstorm. Reports ranged from 12 to over 18 inches on the ground in just 24 hours. Even more

00:13than that if you look at rain from a front that stalled over the area back in the middle of the

00:17weekend. So Lynn Barbie is the mayor of Carolina Beach, North Carolina. And Mayor Barbie, thank you

00:23so much for making time for us. I know that you have had a busy stretch as a city administrator

00:28on the heels of an event like this. We have. It's really been a tale of two days. Yesterday

00:34obviously was a life safety day. We had over 100 I think 117 water rescues pulling people out of

00:43flooded cars and homes. Many in areas that have in my lifetime in Carolina Beach never been

00:49been flooded. So unprecedented rainfall in a very short period of time and unexpected. And within

00:55your community where is most of the damage? I know there's relatively flat real estate in the

01:00coastal plain obviously. Did you find any specific areas where things were a lot worse than others or

01:06was it just evenly distributed? Because it was rainfall I think it was I'll say it's weighted

01:12to our central business district just because of the density gets higher in that area you know in

01:17the central business district. So many of those businesses are digging out today. I think the

01:23video you're seeing right now is in that area. But we had you know we had a number of those

01:30businesses are actually back open today. The ones where the water is receded but we still have roads

01:35closed. We still have flooded roads in that area installed cars that need to be removed in that

01:40area. So it's coming back to life quickly. The community's kicked in and our first responders

01:47just did a phenomenal job yesterday. So you know a lot of people want to know you know could you

01:55have done more? We always ask ourselves could we have done more? But remember we were forecast for

01:59Pennelwich forecast maybe two to four inches and we were prepared for that. We just really

02:06our systems cannot handle like you said with the flat topography we just can't handle 18 to 20

02:12inches of rain in that shorter period of time. At this point moving forward do you still have

02:17any specific safety concerns for people in the affected area? You know it's the standard stuff

02:24stay out of the floodwaters. Don't drive through them. We've had police out today having to run

02:31some of the kids that are out of school you know who want to play in those floodwaters. I can't

02:36express enough to people I don't care where you are in the country floodwaters are filled

02:41with all kinds of bacteria and nasty stuff. You just don't want to be playing around with it.

02:48That makes very good sense and well certainly good advice. Mayor Lynn Barbie from Carolina

02:53Beach, North Carolina. Thanks so much for joining us Mayor Barbie and we hope that the recovery

02:58goes well. I guess if there is a silver lining we're kind of on the tail end of much of the

03:03vacation season. We don't want to write off the remaining weekends. Obviously there's more time

03:07to get out there but hopefully you'll be well prepared for the beginning of the summer of 2025.

03:12Awesome thank you sir appreciate it. All right thank you.

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