Page 3 - Dam Failures News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Contaminated water due to sewage overflew. despite the obvious problems, there are signs of progress. the lights are back on in town and the water is slowly but surely receding. we're not sure whether or not it's going to be raining into the coming days and making the situation possibly worse. boris sanchez, cnn, manning, south carolina. joining me on the phone from columbia south carolina is the information officer. i know you're busy. what's the latest assessment of the dam failures and breaches and how much of a risk do they pose right now? >> well, we've received several reports of local...

You see some of these images out of columbia and just incredible to compare the before and after perspective. we often say you only need 30 centimeters, about one foot of moving water, about six miles per hour to give about 500 pounds of lateral force. it does not take much water to create substantial damage. we know the northern portion of the state, the appalachian mountains rise up to about 3500 feet. farther to the south you bring in the hundreds of rivers and tributaries. the low country, the marshland. all of this water has rained upstream and want to come down eventually into the atlant...

Devastating the damage has been. weather related fatalities are up to 14 with ten dam failures in the state and more on a close watch. governor nikki haley said today that the danger is nowhere near over. >> south carolina has once again proven that we are strong, and we are resilient. we are still in prayer mode. we are still in the fact that the next 36 to 48 hours is going to be volatile. so what we'll tell you is don't let the sunshine fool you, but we are prepared. >> let me bring in craig melvin. as a native of the area, craig, you grew up here. i take it you've never seen anything like ...

On on. we threw our cats in a suitcase. >> reporter: cats in the suitcase. for that woman like many people here were rescued by neighbors. the flood happened so quickly. it was little time for first responders to get here. it was neighbor helping neighbor. >> great way to depict the urgency of all that. folks not out of woods, right? >> reporter: no and the governor stressing this is not over yet. all the water is moving down south. there's been ten different dam failures in the state of south carolina. that puts pressure on other dams and other rivers. the number of dead continue to rise to 1...

26,000 families are without power tonight in south carolina, jake. >> all right. boris sanchez, thank you so much. joining me on the phone tom barry, thanks for joining me. we know that there are evacuations near the overcreek dam. what can you tell us about this breach? >> what we have is a system of smaller lakes as part of the gills creek watershed in the arcadia lakes area of rich land county. and what happens is one lake feeds into another, feeds into another, feeds into another. so we know that there have been dam failures at the upper rocky creek dam. now, lower than that in rockford la...