When Kriston Hicks first got an alert of a flash flood emergency at 9:20 a.m. Sept. 27, the home she shared with her 78-year-old grandfather in Hampton, Tennessee, was already doomed.

“I was wading through water to get my disabled grandfather into the van to leave because I had decided on my own that we needed to evacuate,” Hicks told Knox News in a text Oct. 3, the day after her home was demolished. “No one came to tell me. There is no siren in Hampton.”

The Doe River watershed in Carter County was one of several in East Tennessee that swelled to historic levels as remnants of Hurricane Helene drenched the southern Appalachian mountains in what the National Weather Service said was a once-in-a-millennium rainfall event.

In the National Weather Service office in Morristown, which covers East Tennessee, meteorologists were coordinating with local emergency management officials in several counties to issue warnings.

So, why did the warnings seem to come too late for many people across the region?

The answer lies partly in how the National Weather Service issues flash flood warnings, with emergencies and wireless text alerts reserved for “imminent or ongoing” severe flooding, said Morristown meteorologist Brandon Wasilewski.

Three levels to flash flood warnings in East Tennessee

People reading NWS updates on social media in the days leading up to the generational flood, which claimed at least 12 lives in Tennessee, got a sense of the danger ahead.

By Sept. 25, the NWS office in Morristown was already warning of “extreme risk of life-threatening flooding” along the Tennessee-North Carolina border as Helene moved through. At that point, the office had issued only a flood watch.

Residents in border counties did not get a wireless alert of emergency flash flooding until mid-morning on Sept. 27, when the flooding was already underway.

The National Weather Service needs to have confirmation of life-threatening flooding and “catastrophic damages occurring or imminent” before sending out a rare flash flood emergency, Wasilewski told Knox News.

Text alerts go out once the office adds a “considerable” or “catastrophic” tag to the flood warning, triggered by reports that “flash flooding capable of unusual severity of impact is imminent or ongoing,” Wasilewski said.

One trigger for the highest “catastrophic” tag is that multiple water rescues have occurred. The service relies on local emergency managers to handle evacuation orders.

“We always want to try to be proactive,” Wasilewski said. “We’re the ones that send it out, but we want to make sure that it’s risen to that level.”

While the National Weather Service issues flood warnings for specific rivers, it does not have a mechanism to alert specific communities at special risk of flooding. That’s something the service would like to add in the future, Wasilewski said.

“We don’t have the capability at this time specifically, and that’s why we do rely on more of the local officials,” Wasilewski said. “Whenever we do have an event of this magnitude, this is something that we always try to review and try to learn from.”

The week before the storm was already a strange one for weather in East Tennessee. On Sept. 24, East Tennessee recorded its first ever September tornado, an EF-1 twister in Hancock County with 110 mph winds.

The region also got 2-4 inches of rain before Helene even arrived as a tropical storm, which saturated the ground and caused fiercer runoff later on.

Some residents didn’t make much of flood warnings

Three rivers in particular carried a surge of floodwater from western North Carolina to East Tennessee – the French Broad, Nolichucky and Pigeon rivers. The hard-hit town of Erwin sits on the Nolichucky in Unicoi County.

Zully Manzanares, a Head Start program coordinator in Erwin, saw the flash flood warnings that began the night of Sept. 26 but didn’t realize the danger.

“We’ve gotten them before, but I don’t think the alerts were enough to make us realize like that it was going to be to the extent that it was,” Manzanares told Knox News. “The alerts were coming, but I don’t think that they were to the extreme that they needed to be so that people would have taken it more seriously.”

Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.

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In a sobering tale of heroism and tragedy, Boone McCrary, a devoted emergency room nurse and outdoors enthusiast, set out to rescue a man stranded by Hurricane Helene’s flooding in Tennessee. McCrary, accompanied by his girlfriend, Santana Ray, and his chocolate lab, Moss, encountered disaster when debris clogged their boat motor, leading to a crash into a bridge support that caused the boat to overturn. Ray managed to cling to a branch until rescuers reached her hours later. McCrary and his dog died.

The man McCrary aimed to save, David Boutin, was successfully rescued after clinging to tree branches for six hours. Boutin was devastated upon learning about McCrary’s fate saying, “I’ve never had anyone risk their life for me […] He’s my guardian angel.” McCrary’s body was found days later, 21 river miles away, highlighting the unforgiving nature of Helene’s floods, which claimed 215 lives across six states.

McCrary’s selfless act underscores his commitment to others, echoed by heartfelt tributes from his coworkers at Greeneville Community Hospital. Friends and family remember him for his kindness and zest for life. His sister, Laura Harville, coordinated a massive search effort, demonstrating the profound community spirit inspired by a man whose “life wish” drove him to embrace every moment, even if it occasionally led him to be seen as both “crazy” and a bit reckless. McCrary’s legacy remains a poignant reminder of the heroic sacrifices made in the face of natural calamities. (This story was generated by Newser’s AI chatbot. Source: the AP)

As the Hurricane Helene-driven waters rose around the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, Boone McCrary, his girlfriend and his chocolate lab headed out on his fishing boat to search for a man who was stranded by floodwaters that had leveled his home. But the thick debris in the water jammed the boat’s motor, and without power, it slammed into a bridge support and capsized.

McCrary and his dog Moss never made it out of the water alive.

Search teams found McCrary’s boat and his dog’s body two days later, but it took four days to find McCrary, an emergency room nurse whose passion was being on his boat in that river. His girlfriend, Santana Ray, held onto a branch for hours before rescuers reached her.

David Boutin, the man McCrary had set out to rescue, was distraught when he later learned McCrary had died trying to save him.

“I’ve never had anyone risk their life for me,” Boutin told The Associated Press. “From what I hear that was the way he always been. He’s my guardian angel, that’s for sure.”

The 46-year-old recalled how the force of the water swept him out his front door and ripped his dog Buddy — “My best friend, all I have” — from his arms. Boutin was rescued by another team after clinging to tree branches in the raging river for six hours. Buddy is still missing, and Boutin knows he couldn’t have survived.

McCrary was one of at least 230 people killed by Hurricane Helene’s raging waters and falling trees across six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — and was among a group of first responders who perished while trying to save others. The hurricane caused significant damage in nearby Unicoi County, where flooding swept away 11 workers at an plastics factory and forced a rescue mission at an Erwin, Tennessee, hospital.

McCrary, an avid hunter and fisherman, spent his time cruising the waterways that snake around Greeneville, Tennessee. When the hurricane hit, the 32-year-old asked friends on Facebook if anyone needed help, said his sister, Laura Harville. That was how he learned about Boutin.

McCrary, his girlfriend and Moss the dog launched into a flooded neighborhood at about 7 p.m. on Sept. 27 and approached Boutin’s location, but the debris-littered floodwaters clogged the boat’s jet motor. Despite pushing and pulling the throttle, McCrary couldn’t clear the junk and slammed into the bridge about two hours into the rescue attempt.

“I got the first phone call at 8:56 p.m. and I was a nervous wreck,” Harville said. She headed to the bridge and started walking the banks.

Harville organized hundreds of volunteers who used drones, thermal cameras, binoculars and hunting dogs to scour the muddy banks, fending off copperhead snakes, trudging through knee-high muck and fighting through tangled branches. Harville collected items that carried McCrary’s scent — a pillowcase, sock and insoles from his nursing shoes — and stuffed them into mason jars for the canines to sniff.

On Sunday, a drone operator spotted the boat. They found Moss dead nearby, but there was no sign of McCrary.

Searchers had no luck on Monday, “but on Tuesday they noticed vultures flying,” Harville said. That was how they found McCrary’s body, about 21 river miles (33 kilometers) from the bridge where the boat capsized, she said.

The force of the floodwaters carried McCrary under two other bridges, under the highway and over the Nolichucky Dam, she said. The Tennessee Valley Authority said about 1.3 million gallons (4.9 million liters) of water per second was flowing over the dam on the night McCrary was swept away, more than double the flow rate of the dam’s last regulated release nearly a half-century ago.

Boutin, 46, isn’t sure where he will go next. He is staying with his son for a few days and then hopes to get a hotel voucher.

He didn’t learn about McCrary’s fate until the day after he was rescued.

“When the news hit, I didn’t know how to take it,” Boutin told the AP. “I wish I could thank him for giving his life for me.”

Dozens of McCrary’s coworkers at Greenville Community Hospital have posted tributes to him, recalling his kindness and compassion and desire to help others. He “was adamant about living life to the fullest and making sure along the way that you didn’t forget your fellow man or woman and that you helped each other,” Harville said.

McCrary’s last TikTok video posted before the hurricane shows him speeding along the surface of rushing muddy water to the tune, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” He wrote a message along the bottom that read:

“Some people have asked if I had a ‘death wish.’ The truth is that I have a ‘life wish.’ I have a need for feeling the life running through my veins. One thing about me, I may be ‘crazy,’ Perhaps a little reckless at times, but when the time comes to put me in the ground, you can say I lived it all the way.”