Asheville, N.C. residents are still reeling from the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
“It’s our Hurricane Katrina,” Dr. Carly Brown, a primary care physician in Asheville’s River Arts District, told The Epoch Times. “[We'll] never totally recover.”
A wrecked car near the Swannanoa River, N.C., in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Oct. 3, 2024. Richard Moore/The Epoch Times
The signs of the hurricane are still all over the area.
Tunnel Road, a major thoroughfare leading into the city, is closed right now: a house displaced by the storm is visible on top of a bridge along the route.
The bridge is just one of many scenes of destruction visible in Western North Carolina—storefronts have been blasted open as if from an explosion, cars are upturned in ditches of muddy water, and tractor-trailers are mangled across roads and railways.
Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, dumped 40 trillion gallons of water on several southern states between Sept. 24 and 29, with wind speeds reaching 140 miles per hour. There is no clear fatality count, though it has reached more than 200, with hundreds of people still missing.
In most places, the floodwater is gone, leaving large brown spots on the ground, but the suffering it brought persists. The community faces a cascade of problems for which there is no simple solution.
Foremost, the city is without running water—one of the greatest ironies in the aftermath of the devastating floods.
The storm completely destroyed Asheville’s water supply system. Water mains and underground pipes were swept away as the ground itself was removed by the torrent. Not a single building in town can access running water; citizens survive by the thousands of gallons of water being shipped in every day.
“There’s no running water in all of Asheville,” Ryan Austin, an Asheville local and disaster relief worker, told The Epoch Times. “Plenty of people are bringing in bottled water for drinking, but there’s no way to use water for [anything else].”
Showers are in high demand in the city.
Signs could be seen at the Red Cross HQ reading, “Sorry… No Public Showers.”
“I haven’t had a shower since last Wednesday. I’m hearing horrible things about [others],” Wendy Feinberg, a 77-year-old retired schoolteacher in Asheville, told The Epoch Times.
The water shortage has been especially dire in shelters and hospitals. One hospital was reportedly observed digging wells to obtain water for essential services.
There are also growing concerns around the risk of crime.
Several citizens told The Epoch Times that they had seen looting incidents. Many fear they will be victims of a home invasion and are taking steps to defend themselves.
“I actually own a gun. I have it loaded and sitting by my bed, and I have a butcher knife and a can of wasp spray. I am afraid at night,” Feinberg said. “It’s totally dark, and nobody’s around, so just in case the looters decide to venture out, I’m there ... We’re a little nervous about looting.”
Many have been rendered homeless by the aftermath of the storm, returning to the city only to find that they had lost everything—homes, cars, and all their possessions.
Many businesses remain closed, and their employees are suddenly out of work. Many people are now living with friends and relatives as they process the new reality.
“My son and his wife, they lost everything. My mother-in-law lost everything,” said Sharon Parton, a motel operator in Asheville, who has several relatives now living with her. “For the first time in years, I have a full house,” she told The Epoch Times.
Many of those hardest hit were already “on the fringe and, now, have lost their housing ... those people are now thrust into the unhoused community,” Rev. Micheal Woods, the pastor of Western Carolina Rescue Ministries in Asheville, told The Epoch Times.
Those who were homeless before the storm were among the most sizable share of reported casualties.
Search and rescue operations are still underway across the region’s rural communities, with many people still unaccounted for by authorities. Those efforts are taking precedence before concerted efforts to rebuild get underway.
Brown said that she expects that the final reported death toll “will go up by thousands.”
—Arjun Singh, Joseph Lord
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