COLUMBUS COUNTY, NC (WECT) – Lake Waccamaw State Park workers have to share a superintendent with Carolina Beach until a new one is hired.

Chris Helms, who handled the job in Lake Waccamaw, just got the position as superintendent of the state park in Carolina Beach.

For now, he will handle both parks.

Helms said the park in Carolina Beach is larger and brings a new set of challenges. 

He said the job opening in Lake Waccamaw was just posted last week and it will probably be sometime after the new year before a new superintendent is hired.

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WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) – New Hanover Regional Medical Center received two prestigious awards from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recently.

The American College of Cardiology Foundation’s NCDR Action Registry-GWTG Gold Performance Achievement Award was given to the hospital for its success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients, according to a news release. Only 167 hospitals in the nation are given this recognition and the winners are considered on nine quality measures, including whether patients who smoke were given smoking cessation counseling on discharge.

New Hanover Regional was also reportedly given the American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline Bronze Quality Achievement Award for its “commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients that effectively improves the survival and care of STEMI (ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction) patients.”

The national benchmark for getting STEMI patients to intervention is 90 minutes; NHRMC’s Heart Center averages 44 minutes.

CAROLINA BEACH, NC (WECT) - A large dead whale washed up near the Carolina Beach Boardwalk Wednesday night.

Paul Barrington with the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher says the whale is a 16-foot-long Minke whale. Officials moved the whale so it would not get washed back to sea and secured the area.

Science experts say it was a 2-year-old Minke Whale, which is the smallest of the large baleen species.

Marine biologists form UNCW performed a necropsy on the whale Thursday morning and found significant damage to the internal organs.  The Minke Whale suffered a collapsed lung and other signs of trauma to its organs, which suggest the whale died of natural causes.

The biologists also found several bites on the whale that probably happened post death.  They say some of the bite patterns suggest a large shark, possibly a Great White, bit the animal after it died.