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CHARLOTTE – Tuesday's floods in Charlotte left cars submerged underwater, streets blocked and creeks overflowing. But Mecklenburg County's flood mitigation team said the damage could have been worse.

"Even though a storm event like yesterday rolls through and we do have vehicles flooded, and some flood damage, if you put that in context of what could have happened had we not been committed to removing people and property from the flood plain, it really hits home," Tim Trautman said.

Mecklenburg County's Storm Water Services monitors the area's fragile flood plains. Since 2000, the group has bought and torn down about 450 Charlotte homes and apartments, many of which sat right next to susceptible creek beds.

Nearly half of those properties were flooded Tuesday evening.

"Certainly in the areas hit hardest last night, there were 180 homes, businesses or apartment dwellings that would have flooded had we not had that program," Trautman said.

The biggest flood plain demolition came at east Charlotte's Cavalier Apartments, which the county bought last summer and tore down in March.

"Those areas then kind of store the flood water in a safer environment and that's the reason that we manage the floodplains in that way," Trautman said.

Storm Water Services is now working to leverage federal and local money to acquire part of the Doral Apartments, which sit across the same creek bed as the now-extinct Cavalier apartments. The other half may stay open, but reworked.

"It could either continue to be used in its existing capacity or if they see fit, could be privately redeveloped," Trautman said.

County leaders say the 450 homes and apartments torn down in the past nine years accounted for 60 percent of all past flood insurance claims in the area.