Photo contributed by John Courtney
The effects of Tropical Storm Hermie left Bladen County saturated Friday night as emergency crews dealt with several downed trees across roads and power companies worked to get electricity restored.
There were reports of minor flooding of roads in Bladen County, including the closing of Twisted Hickory Road west of Clarkton, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.
As of 11 p.m., the center of Hermie was moving into North Carolina, located about 30 miles west-southwest of Wilmington with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. The storm was moving northeast at 22 mph, reports the National Weather Service.
Hermie was expected to decrease in speed through Saturday night and should move over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
A tree or tree limb apparently fell on a power line, causing a transformer to blow, near the Walmart shopping center in Elizabethtown about 7:15 p.m., Duke Energy reported. About 450 customers were without power in Elizabethtown, but all power had been restored as of mindight, according to the company’s outage maps.
Four County EMC reported as many as 300 customers without power early Friday night, most along Rosindale Road near Lisbon Road outside of Clarkton. By 11 p.m., Four County was dealing with sporadic outages affecting about 135 customers throughout the county, based on outage maps.
Downed trees kept emergency crews busy around the county Friday night. There were several calls for downed trees across roadways along N.C. 53. Reports also came in from Clarkton and N.C. 242 between Elizabethtown and Bladenboro.
Elwell Ferry will be taken offline Saturday morning, according to Ken Clark of the N.C. Department of Transportation. The ferry will be disconnected from the cable because of the expected rapid rise of water levels on the Cape Fear River due to heavy rain Friday.
Bladen Online’s gauge, which is part of the nationwide Community Collaborative Rain, Hal & Snow Network, recorded 4.95 inches of rain in a 14-hour period ending at 10 p.m.
The National Weather Service is forecasting more rain through Saturday afternoon for Bladen County with wind gusts as high as 28 mph. The affects of Hermie should be ending Saturday night. Sunday’s forecast calls for sunshine with a high of 83.
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