Draft:Walters Dam failure

Walters Dam failure
	2021 image of the Pigeon River near Hartford, Tennessee, downstream of Walters Dam.
Date	27 September 2024
Time	Before 2:56 p.m. (EST)
Duration	27 September 2024 - ongoing (flooding)
Location	Haywood County, North Carolina; Cocke County, Tennessee
Also known as	Waterville Dam collapse
Type	Catastrophic failure
Cause	Significant rainfall caused by remnants of Hurricane Helene

Draft article not currently submitted for review.

This is a draft Articles for creation (AfC) submission. It is not currently pending review. While there are no deadlines, abandoned drafts may be deleted after six months. To edit the draft click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.

To be accepted, a draft should:

Show the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article by using multiple sources that meet four criteria. The sources should be (1) reliable (2) secondary (3) independent of the subject (4) talk about the subject in some depth. For some topics, there are alternative criteria.
Be written from a neutral point of view
Respect copyright and do not plagiarize. Do not copy-paste.

It is strongly discouraged to write about yourself, your business or employer. If you do so, you must declare it.

Where to get help

If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews.
If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.

How to improve a draft

Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia.
Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup
Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references
Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article
Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article
Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources

You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article.

Improving your odds of a speedy review

To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags.

Add tags to your draft

Editor resources

Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs

Last edited by Noble Attempt (talk | contribs) 25 hours ago. (Update)

Submit the draft for review!

‹ The template Infobox event is being considered for merging. ›

The Walters Dam failure refers to the catastrophic failure of the Walters Dam (also referred to as the Waterville Dam) in Haywood County, North Carolina on 27 September 2024, and the subsequent drastic flash flooding of the Pigeon River and settlements downstream of the dam, such as Hartford, TN, and Newport, TN, the county seat of Cocke County. The failure of the dam was caused by exceptional rainfall across the southern Appalachian mountain range generated from the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

Background

As a result of prominent flooding across eastern Tennessee as a result of Hurricane Helena, the Cocke County Emergency Management Agency issued a statement for residents in the area:^[1]

Please do not call central dispatch or E-911 unless experiencing an emergency. We are aware of road conditions and are actively working to place signage in affected areas. Road conditions are impassable at this time. Please shelter in place or go to a family or friends home. If you are displaced, please go to either of our emergency shelters located at the Newport Community Center at 426 Cosby Highway Newport TN, or Liberty Church of Cosby at 3541 Cosby Highway Cosby TN.
— Cocke County Emergency Management Agency

Dam failure

At 2:56 p.m. EST, Mayor of Cocke County Rob Mathis posted a statement on his Facebook page reporting the catastrophic failure of the Walters Dam:^[1]^[2]

"THE WATERVILLE DAM HAS SUFFERED A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE. EVACUATION ALL OF DOWNTOWN NEWPORT IMMEDIATELY."
— Rob Mathis, Facebook

About a half-hour after his initial statement at 3:24 p.m, Mathis issued a state of emergency for Cocke County.^[1]^[2]

The Morristown National Weather Service issued a Flash Flood Emergency for the settlements along Pigeon River, which included Cocke County seat Newport and Hartford, stated that 20,017 people could potentially be impacted by life-threatening flooding, along with four schools and one hospital.^[3]

Flooding

River level probes recorded by United States National Water Prediction Service at the Pigeon River by Newport indicated that at 3:00 p.m. EST, immediately following the dam failure, water levels reached 26.17 feet, over twice as high as the highest "Major" warning level for the location at 12 feet.^[4]

Responses

Multiple inmates of Cocke County Jail were evacuated from the jail to the Cocke County Courthouse located on higher ground.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Moore, Hannah (27 September 2024). "Downtown Newport ordered to evacuate after Waterville Dam fails". WREG. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
^ ^a ^b Lewis, Kaitlin (2024-09-27). "Tennessee's Waterville Dam suffers "catastrophic failure": What we know". Newsweek. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
^ ^a ^b "'State of Emergency' || Downtown Newport being evacuated after 'catastrophic failure' of dam in Waterville, NC; Flash Flood Emergency issued". wbir.com. 2024-09-27. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
^ "Pigeon River at Newport". NOAA. Archived from the original on 27 September 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2024.

[:0-1] Moore, Hannah (27 September 2024). "Downtown Newport ordered to evacuate after Waterville Dam fails". WREG. Retrieved 27 September 2024.

[:1-2] Lewis, Kaitlin (2024-09-27). "Tennessee's Waterville Dam suffers "catastrophic failure": What we know". Newsweek. Retrieved 2024-09-27.

[:2-3] "'State of Emergency' || Downtown Newport being evacuated after 'catastrophic failure' of dam in Waterville, NC; Flash Flood Emergency issued". wbir.com. 2024-09-27. Retrieved 2024-09-27.

[4] "Pigeon River at Newport". NOAA. Archived from the original on 27 September 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2024.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]