MAGGIE VALLEY, N.C. – Residents are being urged to stay away from their North Carolina mountainside homes after a 30-foot-high mudslide washed over their road.
Emergency workers evacuated about 40 people from a dozen homes near Maggie Valley in western North Carolina after the Friday mudslide.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported Monday that authorities took the evacuees back to their homes on all-terrain vehicles just long enough to gather belongings.
But residents were told they may need to stay away for weeks or longer as rain threatens to further wash out a slope that officials say is unstable and dangerous.
Investigators say recent heavy rain and snow were factors in the mudslide. A 2003 landslide in the area killed a woman whose home was crushed.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox