LAKE LURE, North Carolina, June 17 (Reuters) – When Hurricane Helene’s flood waters slammed into Lake Lure’s century-old dam last September, gouging a massive scar into one embankment and cascading five months’ worth of rain down its sides, town commissioner Dave DiOrio worried it might fail.
Emergency sirens blared. “DAM FAILURE IMMINENT!” the National Weather Service warned in a social media post, urging 3,000 residents living downstream to seek higher ground.
“When it starts breaking out on the sides, I mean who knows,” said DiOrio, a former Navy captain with an engineering background.
In the end, the dam held. But the disaster galvanized the North Carolina resort town’s efforts to seek federal funding for an ambitious …