Debby Leaves Thousands Without Power in Gaston County

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Wind and rain from former Tropical Storm Debby have pounded the WCCB Charlotte viewing area for the better part of the past 24 hours, prompting flash flood warnings across Gaston County.

Torrential rainfall opened up a massive sinkhole under West Chestnut Street in Stanley, closing the busy thruway until further notice. Alex Harless and Emily Lowenstein live just down the street and say they weren’t surprised by what they saw.

“Just like a week ago, [Alex] and I were looking at the road, and we were like, ‘There’s a crack in the road. Somebody’s going to fall in soon,’” Lowenstein says.

Known problem spots like the South Fork Catawba in Cramerton were relatively tame Thursday, but the river is expected to rise to moderate flood stage by Friday afternoon.

“It was raining pretty hard, it was sideways, there were high winds, and then, all of the sudden, boom,” says Dan Weekley, a High Shoals resident.

The bigger story in the western Charlotte suburbs is the power – or, lack thereof.

6,000 customers were without power in Gaston County at one point Thursday afternoon. Weekley was one of them – gusty winds and torrential rainfall knocked a tree into a power line across the street where he lives, disconnecting the city from a nearby substation.

“They’re going to be here for a while,” says Weekley, referring to Duke Energy crews trying to restore power.

“It took out about six power lines, and probably some transformers down there at the substation blew up, so it’s going to be a while.”

It was the same song and same dance in the dark in neighboring Ranlo – all 1,300-plus Duke Energy customers within town limits were without power Thursday evening. Latoya Jackson says this is her eighth power outage since she moved here earlier this year.

“It is frustrating, I’ll just say it,” Jackson laments, “We’re in 2024. I don’t know how we’re still having problems with grids in this advanced technological age in this country.“

But not everyone was having a bad time.

WCCB Charlotte caught up with several teenagers enjoying their last few days of summer with a homemade slip-n-slide… and Debby was happy to oblige.

“I was awake and then all of the lights went out,” says a teen who identified himself as Cleetus McFarland (no, not THAT Cleetus McFarland).

“I was like, ‘What the heck, what happened?’ And then it dawned on me: storm. And now, we’re basically just trying to make the best out of a bad situation.”