North carolina

Dry conditions, wind and trees downed by Hurricane Helene are fueling wildfires in North and South Carolina. Officials say evacuation orders are in effect Tuesday in some parts of the states while they continue to monitor the blazes. Three fires are burning in a rural North Carolina county about 80 miles west of Charlotte. At least one of the fires was caused by a downed power line. In South Carolina, two fires are burning in a mountainous region and both have no containment so far. A forestry professor says trees downed during last year’s Hurricane Helene dropped tons of fuel on the ground for the fires.

Wildfires forced a mandatory evacuation in one North Carolina county as emergency crews fought separate fires in an area of the state still recovering from Hurricane Helene, while South Carolina’s governor declared an emergency in response to a growing wildfire. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety issued a mandatory evacuation Saturday night for parts of Polk County in western North Carolina. The agency warns residents could be trapped, injured, or killed if they remain in the impacted areas. In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster has declared a state of emergency as part of an effort to stop a blaze in Pickens County called the Table Rock Fire that started Friday in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina appeals court has overturned a former county sheriff’s fraud and obstruction convictions from late 2022. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of ex-Granville County Sheriff Brindell Wilkins on Tuesday. Wilkins served as sheriff for 10 years and has been serving time in state prison. The intermediate-level appeals court said that allegations related to Wilkins falsifying his firearms training requirements didn’t meet the necessary elements for the obstruction and fraud charges. The ruling comes seven months after a subordinate to Wilkins had his obstruction convictions related to the training overturned. The ex-sheriff pleaded to unrelated crimes last fall.

Parts of southeastern North Carolina have been deluged by another historic flood. Highways in Brunswick County remained underwater Tuesday, a day after about 18 inches of rain fell at nearby Carolina Beach in 12 hours. Emergency workers brought food and water to people as they waited for the flooding to recede. But the same area has seen four other floods of a lifetime in the past 25 years from Hurricane Floyd in 1999, unnamed storms in 2010 and 2015, and the benchmark flood with 30 inches of rain from Hurricane Florence in 2018. Meteorologists says warmer temperatures from climate change allows the air to hold more moisture and heavier rains to fall.