LAKE LURE, N.C. ( WJZY ) — For a split second, it sounded like thunder. Mike and Susan Coffey were sitting in silence, trying to figure out what was happening outside their Lake Lure home as the winds and rain from Hurricane Helene hammered the North Carolina mountains.
The Coffeys and their cat were the only two living beings inside their mountainside home that sits along the Broad River.
In the next split-second, they both knew the sounds below them weren’t coming from the heavens. They didn’t know it then, but they were hearing millions of gallons of flood waters, raining down hell along the river’s path through Lake Lure.
“We started to hear a lot of noise,” Susan said, recounting the moment to Nexstar’s WJZY. “Rumbling. Rumbling – wasn’t thunder. What’s this weird rumbling?”
“Trees, falling rocks… so it got a little bit frightening at that point,” Mike said. “We said we’d better get to higher ground, just in case. So, we grabbed the cat, a couple bottles of water, a bag of chips; like we were really thinking. And got in our cars and drove up the driveway, which was probably 30 feet higher and parked in the cul-de-sac and parked our cars against the mountainside.”