Fayetteville and Cumberland County saw strong winds and rain Friday as the remnants of Hurricane Ian moved through the region after making landfall along the South Carolina coast earlier in the day.
As of 8:45 p.m., the emergency services director for Cumberland County said the remnants of Ian — which was downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone — appeared to be “lifting up out of the area.”
Gene Booth said the storm was mostly out of Cumberland County.
The storm caused fallen trees and power outages, but no injuries were reported, emergency officials said.
A flash flood warning is in effect for Cumberland County until 11:15 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.
As of 9 p.m., about 2,200 people in Cumberland County were without power. That included about 1,500 Duke Energy customers, 640 customers with South River Electric Membership Corp., and 60 customers with the Fayetteville Public Works Commission.
“Overall, we have not had water rescues,’’ Booth said. “No loss of life. No widespread structural damage. This is no (Hurricanes) Matthew or Florence situation where people are displaced for two or three weeks.”
As of 8 p.m., PWC reported that roughly 60 electric customers were still without service.
“Crews have restored all major outages and will resume restoration efforts early Saturday morning,” the utility said in a release. “Most current outages require the customer to make repairs before PWC can complete restoration.”
PWC water operations have continued to operate throughout the day with minimal impact from the storm, the local utility said. PWC planned to monitor all operations throughout the evening should any conditions change.
PWC customers should call 910-483-1382 to report outages. The PWC online outage map is available at www.faypwc.com/electric-outage-map/.
Phil Badgett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Raleigh, said Friday night that most of the heavy rain was just about over for Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
Strong winds with gusts were expected to last until early Saturday morning, he said.
“Currently, it’s still wind gusts of 20 (mph) to 37 (mph), and we've had wind gusts as high as 56 mph,’’ Badgett said before 9 p.m. “It's still gusting wind in the 30s and low 40s. That is going to continue at least into 2 or 3 in the morning with the wind.”
The storm was expected to be out of the area with the exception of some light showers by 9:30 or 10 p.m.
“It’s actually moving out pretty fast now,” he said.
Saturday “should be mostly cloudy but some partial sun in the afternoon and temperatures in the low to mid-70s,’’ Badgett said. “Definitely not as rainy or windy as today.”
Southern Cumberland may have seen a little more rain than the downtown area of Fayetteville, Booth said. About 2.3 inches of rain was reported downtown, he said.
Michael Futch covers Fayetteville and education for CityView. He can be reached at mfutch@cityviewnc.com.
