Custom Search

Monday, September 17, 2018

KAIDEN LEE-WELCH, 1, VICTIM OF HURRICANE FLORENCE IN NC; BODY FOUND








KAIDEN LEE-WELCH, 1, VICTIM OF HURRICANE FLORENCE - BODY FOUND TODAY:

PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY & VOLUNTEER TO HELP THE CITIZENS OF NORTH CAROLINA.


Post Sources: Charlotte Observer, NBC News, The State, Youtube


**** Florence’s toll: Infant killed by tree, 1-year-old swept away, killed by floodwaters


This story was updated at 10:45 a.m. Monday.

Rescue workers in Union County on Monday found the body of a 1-year-old boy who was swept away in floodwaters on Sunday, adding to Tropical Storm Florence’s death toll.

The Union County Sheriff’s Office said shortly after 10 a.m. that the boy’s body had been recovered. Investigators said his mother drove around barricades on a flooded section of N.C. 218.

Kaiden Lee-Welch’s mother was driving east towards Wadesboro, investigators said, when her car was floated off the road by waters from nearby Richardson Creek.

“Her vehicle left the roadway and came to rest amongst a group of trees,” the Union County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “She managed to free herself and Kaiden, who was in a car seat, but lost her grip on him in the rushing water.”

On Monday, a Union County Sheriff’s deputy guarding the barricade on NC-218 said he’s been here since 1992 and has never seen the water so high.

Two rescue workers were seen coming out of a flooded soybean field near the road, carrying what appeared to be a container covered with a white blanket shortly after 10:30 am as a helicopter hovered overhead.

Elsewhere in Union County, deputies also recovered a man’s body in Marshville on Monday morning.

Observer news partner WBTV reported he was found beside a car after floodwaters receded on Landsford Drive.

In Dallas, N.C., an infant boy was the first person reported killed by the storm in the Charlotte area.

Kade Gill died Sunday after a large pine tree fell on his mobile home Sunday afternoon, Gaston County police confirmed. Sunday was also the day he turned three months old, reported Observer news partner WBTV.

The Charlotte region was starting to dry out Monday and clean up after Florence’s soaking, which delivered 11 inches or more to parts of the city and sent creeks and streams overflowing their banks.

Monday morning, 12,385 customers in Charlotte remained without power, Duke Energy reported, along with almost 4,000 in surrounding counties. City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County offices remained closed.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools were canceled for the third straight day, leaving 148,000 students and the children who attend daycares linked to the CMS calendar home again.

In Dallas, police said a three-month-old boy was at home with family members on Moses Court, off Old Willis School Road, around 12:45 p.m. Sunday when the tree fell.

“It basically just cut the trailer in half,” Gaston County Police Capt. Jon Leatherwood said.

The boy was pronounced dead at Carolinas Medical Center Sunday afternoon, Leatherwood said.

The Gaston Gazette identified his parents as Olen and Tammy Gill, and said the boy was in his mother’s arms on the couch when the tree crashed through the home and struck him in the head. Tammy Gill was hospitalized at CaroMont Regional Medical Center and released Sunday, the newspaper reported.

Kade Gill was alive and crying when his parents pulled him from the home, reported the Observer’s news partner WBTV.

“The tree had divided us,” Kade’s father, Olen Gill, told WBTV. “So I am in the kitchen. She (Kade’s mother) is in the living room on the couch. I had to come out and rip the air conditioner out of the window, and that’s when we handed him through the window.”

Including this case, Hurricane Florence has killed at least 17 people in the Carolinas. Eleven of those fatalities were in North Carolina.

Partial levee breach

A flash flood warning had been issued for southwestern Rowan County until 11:45 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

It also said that at 8:44 p.m., “Rowan County Emergency Management is reporting a partial breach of the Lake Corriher levee in Landis.”

But it appeared Monday morning that the remainder of the levee would hold.

“Due to the decrease in heavy rainfall, water levels have receded from the dam and levee,” Rowan County Emergency Management said in a statement. They planned to continue monitoring the situation. Landis is about 30 miles northeast of Charlotte.

Rising creeks

Meanwhile, creeks rose all over the Charlotte area Sunday afternoon. The southern part of Mecklenburg County and its neighbors to the southeast faced particular trouble.

Rain gauges there measured massive rainfall over the past three days: 10.9 inches at Matthews Elementary School, 11 inches nearby on U.S. 74, 10.2 inches at McAlpine and Sardis roads.

At 1:30 p.m., after much of the metro area had been pelted since early morning with gusting winds and sheets of rain, the National Weather Service issued a rare emergency flood warning for south Charlotte, Pineville, Matthews and Mint Hill. There, the drainage basins of some of Mecklenburg County’s best-known creeks began spilling over into roadways, bridges and neighborhoods.

The emergency warning was quickly extended to Union and York counties.

The weather service told residents in the quickly expanding emergency flash-flood area that they faced an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” and the agency urged people not to travel unless they were evacuating.

“SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!” the weather service said in an unusually urgent Sunday afternoon statement.

In Union, afternoon flooding had already closed roads and bridges and set off home rescues, authorities said. At 4:15 p.m., the county Emergency Management Service announced a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew due to worsening conditions.

By 4 p.m., several creeks had risen above flood stage, the National Weather Service said. The Weather Service said McAlpine Creek would flood homes around Colony Road and Weirton Place and Little Sugar Creek was likely to flood homes near Archdale Drive.

Buildings near Addison Drive in southeast Charlotte were already taking on water from McMullen Creek, the National Weather Service said, and buildings along N.C. 51 in Pineville are at risk of flooding.

“At least 20 roads have been closed due to floodwaters in the southern part of (Mecklenburg) county. Travel is dangerous,” the National Weather Service said.

The threat of similar flooding is expected to cross the state line later today and move south into the fast-growing York County cities of Fort Mill, Rock Hill and Tega Cay, the weather service said.

Meanwhile, flooding along the Catawba River could come as early as Monday, Duke Energy says.

Doug Outlaw, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Greenville-Spartanburg, said bands of rain from the remains of Florence moving across South Carolina set off widespread flooding throughout Chesterfield County, S.C., then crossed the state line into Union County. There, rising creeks fed by rainfall and runoff crested bridges and roads, and forced home evacuations, he said.

In south Mecklenburg, rain also brought the water levels in Briar Creek, McMullen Creek and Little Sugar Creek to near flood stage, leading the weather service to issue the rare emergency flood warning, Outlaw said.

Across the region, Duke Energy says water could begin spilling out of several of its lakes above and below Charlotte starting as early as Monday evening, utility spokeswoman Kim Crawford told the Observer on Sunday.

The most immediate flooding threats are to areas along lakes James, Rhodhiss and Lookout Shoals, Crawford said, where the reservoirs are expected to be several feet above full pond by Monday evening, Crawford said.

Duke is also monitoring Mountain Island Lake, a major source of the region’s drinking water. But Crawford said Duke’s fears of flooding there have eased for now due to tapering rainfall in that part of the county.

Elsewhere, as the rainfall and runoff move southward, and are passed dam to dam around Charlotte, the flood threat moves into Duke’s reservoirs in South Carolina. The threat is particularly heightened at Lake Wateree, the last and lowest reservoir on the chain.

Catawba Riverkeeper Sam Perkins says the combination of rainfall and runoff will plague the Catawba basin for days or even weeks to come.

Duke began preparing for the arrival of Florence weeks ago by lowering water levels 4 to 5 feet in its four biggest reservoirs — James, Norman, Wylie and Wateree — in anticipation of what Florence was expected to dump across the region.

All that will be compounded by a massive runoff from the river’s countless tributaries, stretching hundreds of miles from the mountains to the S.C. Upstate.

As with rainfall, the bulk of the power outages appear to have occurred in the more heavily populated area of the region, according to Duke Energy.

The number of Mecklenburg County residents doubled throughout Sunday morning, to almost 30,000. At midday, Union County had 5,100 Duke customers without power; Gaston County, 3,800; and York County, 3,200.

By comparison, in New Hanover County/Wilmington alone, where the storm made landfall last week, the outages approached 104,000. Duke estimated that as many as three-quarters of its N.C. customers, or 3 million in all, could lose power before the storm ends.

Much of the Charlotte area and Western North Carolina remained under a flash flood watch into Monday morning.

The National Weather Service says the South Fork River in Gaston County is expected to crest at 6 1/2 feet above flood stage on Monday, threatening roads, bridges, parks and homes, particularly in and around Cramerton.
—————————————————————————


***** North Carolina 1-year-old missing after being swept away by rushing floodwater
Kaiden Lee's mother lost her grip on the child's hand after getting out of their car.
The search resumed Monday morning, according to officials.
A North Carolina 1-year-old was swept away by rushing floodwaters caused by Florence after his mother lost her grip on the child.
Search and rescue teams spent hours looking for Kaiden Lee-Welch overnight on Sunday into Monday after water from the deadly storm flooded the highway his mother was driving on as she headed east to Wadesboro, North Carolina.

"I was holding his hand, trying to hold him, trying to pull him up ... I couldn't hold on anymore, and he let go," Lee's mother told FOX 46 WJZY.

The search for Kaiden resumed Monday morning, Union County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post.

Kaiden's mother, identified as Dazia Lee by FOX 46 WJZY, told authorities she drove around a barricade on North Carolina Highway 218 toward Wadesboro, when she encountered the swift water rising from Richardson Creek.

The water pushed her car off of the road and and left her stuck in a group of trees, according to police.

Lee was able to get Kaiden out of the car, but the water caused her to lose her grip.

Lee sobbed as she described her son to the local news outlet.

"My son is 1 years old. He's the sweetest boy you could ever have," she said.

It was not immediately clear why Lee was traveling on the highway.

"I did everything everything I could from the moment I was pregnant to the moment I lost him. I did everything I could as a parent to save him and protect him," she said.

Family members joined police in searching for the boy overnight. Police urged residents to avoid Highway 218 due to ongoing flooding.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said on Sunday that flood waters were raging across the state and have created an enormous risk for residents of the state.

With Florence, which has been downgraded to a tropical depression, making its way across the region, flash flood warnings were in effect across much of North Carolina, as well as in northeast South Carolina and southwest Virginia, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm is responsible for at least 17 deaths, with the majority the victims located in North Carolina. Two babies and a mother were killed in separate incidents in Gaston County and Wilmington.

No comments: