Flooding from Chantal's remnants forces dozens to flee homes in North
Carolina
[July 08, 2025]
By ALLEN G. BREED
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Floodwaters from the remnants of Tropical Storm
Chantal swept a woman in her car from a rural road and forced dozens of
people to flee their homes, officials in North Carolina said Monday.
Parts of central North Carolina experienced hazardous conditions
overnight including 3 to 8 inches (8 to 20 centimeters) of rain,
according to North Carolina Emergency Management. Multiple water rescues
were conducted in Alamance, Orange, Chatham and Durham counties
overnight, and several areas have declared local states of emergency,
officials said.
About 120 roads were closed Monday across the state, but several major
roads had reopened, including parts of Interstate 40 and 85 in Alamance
County, according to Gov. Josh Stein’s office.
An 83-year-old woman from Pittsboro was killed when her car was swept
off a rural Chatham County road by floodwaters Sunday night, according
to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. Responding troopers found
the submerged vehicle about 100 feet (31 meters) from the road, and the
woman was found dead inside, officials said.
The Chapel Hill Fire Department and neighboring agencies completed more
than 50 water rescues, many of them in areas where floodwaters entered
or threatened to enter apartments, officials said. More than 60 people
were displaced. After helping with rescues in Chapel Hill, the Durham
Fire Department said in a social media post that its crews performed
more than 80 more rescues in the Old Farm area.
Alesia Ray, 65, stood on a second-floor staircase at her apartment
building in Chapel Hill for five hours, clicking a flashlight, until
rescuers in a rubber boat got her out. Below her, floodwaters wrecked
her home.
“It was really scary,” she said Monday as she and fiance Thomas Hux
worked to salvage some of their belongings. “I’ve never experienced
anything like that. I don’t want to go through that again.”
Floodwaters inundated Chapel Hill's Eastgate Crossings shopping center,
where the red-framed glass doors of a Talbots store were blown in and
debris-specked white mannequins littered the floor. Next door, at the
Great Outdoor Provision Co., manager Chad Pickens said kayaks ended up
30 feet (9 meters) from where they had been on display, and shelves in
the shoe room were toppled like dominoes.
What happened there pales in comparison to the floods in Texas, he said.
“The bottom line is these are just things, and while it hurts to lose
things, it’s a lot different to losing people,” Pickens said.
A large brown dumpster had smashed into the outdoor dining area of a
Shake Shack in the shopping center. The windows were blown out and
chairs and cups were strewed everywhere.
Hua Jiang said he put in an order at the Shake Shack around 8:45 p.m.
Sunday. and about 10 minutes later, water started flowing through the
doors. After about five minutes, employees said they should make a run
for it, he said. Jiang’s Toyota RAV4 was already flooded in the parking
lot, so he went to a Chipotle on higher ground.
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A floating garbage container crashed through the front of this
business in the Eastgate Shopping Center after it was flooded during
tropical storm Chantal, Monday, July 7, 2025, in Chapel Hill, N.C.
(AP Photo/Chris Seward)
“It’s unfortunate, but that’s life,” Jiang said, wiping sweat from
his brow Monday morning.
After seeing photos of flooding on Lake Hyco in Person County, Kevin
Nickerson traveled from Durham to check on the boathouse he and his
wife own.
Whole boathouses were floating in the lake when he arrived. The lake
rose about 6 feet (2 meters) from the week prior, he said. At the
Nickersons' boathouse, water had pushed the retired couple's boat up
to the ceiling and their fridge was drifting inside. They have to
wait for the water to subside to fully assess the damage.
“This isn't something that we had really thought about, so we will
find out, you know, how good our insurance is,” Sandy Nickerson
said.
Several solid-waste trucks and police cars were also totaled from
rushing floodwaters at a facility used to service local government
vehicles in Carrboro, a town near Chapel Hill, the town's public
works director, Kevin Belanger, said at a news conference Monday.
In Chatham County, authorities were searching for two canoers who
went missing during the storm on Jordan Lake, according to a county
sheriff’s office statement.
The Eno River crested early Monday at Durham at 25.6 feet (7.8
meters), surpassing the previous record of 23.6 feet (7.2 meters),
according to the National Water Prediction Service’s website.
The Haw River crested early Monday at 32.5 feet (9.9 meters), the
second highest river stage ever recorded at the Town of Haw River.
That level was only eclipsed by Hurricane Fran in 1996 when the
stage reached 32.8 feet (10 meters), according to a post from the
National Weather Service’s Raleigh office.
Tropical Storm Chantal was downgraded to a depression Sunday after
making landfall near Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, early Sunday,
the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
By late Monday afternoon, the storm was off Delaware's coast, with
maximum sustained winds of 25 mph (40 kph). It was moving northeast
at about 21 mph (34 kph). Forecasters warned of dangerous surf and
rip currents at beaches from northeastern Florida to the
mid-Atlantic states for the next couple of days.
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