Two dead; water restrictions in Mebane; some roads, bridges impassable
At least two people in Alamance County perished this week amid the flooding and torrential rains that hammered the region as Tropical Storm Chantal passed through the Carolinas.
These two individuals were among the six people who, according to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, lost their lives to weather-related phenomena after Chantal made landfall along the South Carolina coast on Sunday. In the meantime, thousands of other area residents have had to contend with power outages, road closures, and interruptions in public services that have also cropped up in the wake of this natural disaster.
Graham’s police department has identified one of Chantal’s casualties as 23-year-old Hajar Hassib, who was apparently caught up by the floodwaters that the storm had unleashed along Jim Minor Road.
According to the city’s police department, Hassib’s family reported her missing after she failed to return home on Sunday. The city’s police department ultimately tracked Hassib’s cell phone to a location along South Jim Minor Road that had witnessed especially severe flooding during the storm.
A subsequent search led by the local sheriff’s office found Hassib’s car in a roadside pond near Turner Road. According to the city’s police department, volunteers from the Alamance County Rescue Unit were able to get into the vehicle – only to find that the 23-year-old driver had already succumbed.
In the meantime, the office of Alamance County’s sheriff has reported the death of another individual whose vehicle was, likewise, swept up by floodwaters during the storm.
According to the sheriff’s office, this driver, whose name has not yet been released to the public, was one of two people who braved the storm in separate vehicles on Sunday evening. The second driver contacted the sheriff’s office at 11:36 p.m. after they lost sight of their friend near the intersection of Jones and Calloway drives.
UPDATE: On Thursday, July 10, 2025, the sheriff’s office updated the information to include the identity of the deceased man: James Michael Parcell, white, male, age 71, from Haw River.
Deputies later found the missing vehicle inundated by floodwaters some 50 to 100 yards from the roadway. According to the sheriff’s office, the driver was already dead by the time rescue crews were able to get to the vehicle.
These attempted rescues were among the dozens of weather-related emergencies that occurred in Alamance County during the height of the storm.
[Story continues below photos of some of the local damage and conditions.]
Haw River at second highest level in history
According to Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens, local emergency personnel received a total of 61 calls for water rescue or evacuation after 6:45 p.m. on Sunday. Stevens added that many of these calls came from the eastern parts of the county, which was especially hard hit by the storm’s incessant rains.
“The Haw River crested at more than 32 feet yesterday (its second highest level on record), inundating homes and cutting off access to several neighborhoods in eastern Alamance County,” the county attorney recalled in a brief statement on Monday evening. “At Lake Michael in Mebane, high water levels raised concerns about the integrity of the dam, leading to voluntary evacuations of residents downstream.”
Meanwhile, flooding from the municipal reservoir that serves both Mebane and Graham has stalled the operations of their joint water treatment facility. As an interim measure, the two cities have leaned on the privately-owned Orange-Alamance Water Authority to supplement their reserves of fresh drinking water.
Code Red water restrictions in Mebane
This stopgap has nevertheless failed to slake the demand in Mebane, which issued a “CodeRED” alert on Wednesday when it found it had just two days worth of potable water at its disposal. The city’s administrators went on to implement a “water shortage response plan” while repairs remain underway at the treatment facility.
[Editor’s Note: See separate story on Mebane’s restrictions here: https://alamancenews.com/mebane-businesses-forced-to-close-as-flooding-halts-flow-of-municipal-water/]
“[This plan] requires residents and businesses not to use any water other than limited drinking purposes when bottled water is not available, limited restroom usage (not including showers), and required medical usage,” the city’s administrators went on to explain when they announced the plan’s implementation. “We urge everyone to use bottled water or other alternative sources. City personnel and local law enforcement will enforce the water shortage plan. All regulations will continue until the Graham-Mebane water treatment plant is back in operation, and we have no estimated date at this time.”
Although the city of Graham draws water from the same treatment facility as Mebane, it has not implemented a similar rationing plan thanks to backup water supplies from Burlington, according to Graham’s mayor Jennifer Talley.
The combination of flooding and strong gusts also left a considerable number of area residents without power after the storm passed through the region. By 6:21 a.m. on Monday, Duke Energy was still reporting a total of 88 outages in Alamance County, affecting some 7,908 of the company’s 86,147 customers in this jurisdiction.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
TO KEEP UP WITH THE LATEST LOCAL NEWS SUBSCRIBE TO THE ALAMANCE NEWS. JUST $50 FOR UNLIMITED ONLINE ACCESS – and for Alamance County residents, price includes a print copy by mail.
Although areas along the Orange-Alamance border seemed to suffer the worst of Chantal’s fury, the storm didn’t exactly spare other parts of Alamance County.
According to Daniel Shoffner with the Burlington Fire Department, there were at least 25 “weather related incidents” within the city’s municipal limits between 5:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on Sunday.
“These incidents involved multiple water rescues, powerlines brought down from falling tree debris, trees blocking streets, and trees or large tree limbs falling on houses,” Shoffner recounted in a news release on Monday. “During this time frame, there were another 21 incidents that involved fire alarms, emergency medical responses, and vehicle accidents.”
Shoffner added that, as a base of comparison, the fire department normally averages about 30 calls for service within any 24-hour period.a
Elon, not hit as hard, helped other jurisdictions
Chantal also generated a lot of additional work for Elon’s fire department – although most of these added duties were outside the department’s immediate service area.
During a town council meeting on Tuesday, Elon’s town manager Richard Roedner reported that the fire department responded to several out-of-town emergencies due to the mutual aid agreements it has with the agencies in other jurisdictions. Roedner added that the fire department was even able to use the older of its two ladder trucks to pull off a successful water rescue during the storm.
Roedner said that one of the storm’s most serious aftereffects within Elon’s own borders was the collapse of a large tree that had temporarily obstructed the 300 block of West Lebanon Avenue. The town manager added that the town’s staff had to wait until Tuesday to haul off the tree because some electrical lines had gotten tangled up in the boughs.
“So, West Lebanon was closed until this afternoon,” he recalled during the council meeting on Tuesday. “But the road is now open.”a
Roads closed
A number of other storm-related road closures were still in effect on Wednesday afternoon – 10 of which were itemized on the website of the state transportation department. These Chantal-related impediments included the closure of Fleming Graham Road and a sink hole along NC 119 north of Burlington, bridge damage along Jimmie Kerr Road, a washed out stretch of Southern High School Road, the closure of Stone Street near Trollingwood Road, an undermined portion of Cooks Mill Road north of Burlington, a pipe washout along Gerringer Road in Elon, and an undermined culvert along NC 49 near Mebane.
As of Wednesday, the state expected each of these roads to be reopened to traffic by July 15. It was projecting longer closures, however, along Dickie Mill and Mebane Rogers road, where pipes have been washed out or otherwise damaged.
[Editor’s Note: additional road closures may be in effect after the additional heavy rains that fell across the county on Wednesday night.]
Concerns about the aftereffects of the storm ultimately prompted John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, to issue an emergency declaration for the entire county. This declaration, which went into effect at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, didn’t call for evacuations or any other restrictions, although it did activate the county’s emergency response plan.
As an added precaution, the county’s governing board canceled a meeting they had planned to hold at 9:30 a.m. on Monday. Meanwhile, the county’s administrative offices operated on a two-hour delay that morning due to lingering anxieties about road conditions.
One local institution that survived the storm relatively unscathed is the Alamance-Burlington school system.
“We are fortunate that we did not have any damage to our school properties during the storm,” Emily-Lynn Adkins, a spokeswoman for the school system, acknowledged in an interview Tuesday.
