ASHEVILLE, N.C.—About two weeks have passed since raging floodwaters and landslides from Hurricane Helene reached western North Carolina, devastating urban and rural communities and severely damaging roads, homes, and power sources.
Because hundreds of roads were blocked or completely washed away, rescue crews had to reach victims by mule, horseback, and on foot. Rescue efforts are still underway and continue around the clock.
As of Oct. 7, at least 230 people are known to have been killed by Helene, The Associated Press reported. It is the deadliest mainland hurricane since Katrina in 2005.
Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on Sept. 24 as a Category 4 hurricane. It left a swath of destruction throughout the Southeast extending to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
Flooding in western North Carolina eclipsed records that stood for more than a century. The French Broad River in Asheville peaked at 24.67 feet, surpassing the previous record of 23.1 feet from July 1916.
Just before Helene hit, storms drenched Asheville and surrounding western North Carolina towns.
“Communities were wiped off the map,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said.
Seth Norris is the pastor at Perkinsville Baptist Church in Boone, a mountain town that is home to Appalachian State University and the charitable organization Samaritan’s Purse.
The church has been transformed into a relief center where Norris and his congregation are working alongside Samaritan’s Purse and the North Carolina Baptist Men’s Association to provide food, water, hygiene items, first-aid kits, and other essential items.
“In western North Carolina, if you live on the side of a mountain you might have one way in and one way out. There are entire mountainsides completely gone. It’s still not known how many people are missing because there are so many pockets of communities,” Norris told The Epoch Times.
Rescue efforts are challenging because entire roads are gone or cut off, and people in need cannot be easily reached, he said. Pack mules are being used by some rescue teams to get to stranded survivors.
“My house is fine, but down the street there is a house in the middle of the road. You have to assess house by house, and not just neighborhood by neighborhood,” Norris said.
“We’re delivering generators via side by sides,“ he said, referring to off-road vehicles. ”Churches are partnering to bring in and manage donations. We’re backpacking into unreached areas to bring supplies. We’re meeting people where they are, just like Jesus started the conversation with food and something to drink.”
On Oct. 6, President Joe Biden announced the deployment of 500 additional active-duty troops to western North Carolina to help with ongoing relief efforts.
The Biden administration dispatched 1,000 troops on Oct. 2.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has established three emergency operations centers in North Carolina and nine other centers in the Southeast. The agency’s “emergency power teams” are tasked with assessing water and wastewater systems, inspecting bridges and roads, and removing debris.
The Biden administration has provided more than $137 million in federal funding to assist residents affected by Hurricane Helene to “jumpstart their recoveries” and there will be “more to come,” the White House stated.
Norris said that, for the long term, the region will need financial assistance from FEMA and other government agencies, but right now and for the immediate short term, “they can’t do what we can do here.”
“Disasters start local and end local. We’re gearing up for a long recovery. There is a lot of urgency at the front end to make sure people are safe and accounted for, and make sure they have food, water, and safe shelter,” he said.
“Neighbors are helping neighbors, and the church is doing what it has for 2,000 years. We’re bringing hope in the middle of all this brokenness, and we will keep doing that regardless of what outside resources we get or don’t get.”
In Kannapolis, north of Charlotte, Bishop Ronnie Blackmon of the Church of God of Prophecy is managing a team that is collecting and distributing supplies for several congregations impacted in the western North Carolina mountains.
Long-term struggles are ahead for people who could wait for weeks for power and even basic home repairs, according to Blackmon.
“Tragedies like this can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out the best in us,” he told The Epoch Times.
“People have a tendency to lose hope when a disaster of this magnitude happens. We’re focused on giving people emotional support to go along with food, water, clothes, and other supplies they need.”
Perched at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville became a “catch basin” for rain rushing down 4,000 feet of elevation, Asheville Fire Chief Michael Cayse said.
A city with 95,000 residents, Asheville is located at the intersection of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers. That leaves the region vulnerable to flooding.
The death toll is at least 72 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville. The county medical examiner had to stop updating the death toll while waiting for a support team from the state to arrive to help, Buncombe County spokesperson Lillian Govus said.
“It smells like death,” an Asheville resident told The Epoch Times as she walked along the French Broad River near the Biltmore section of Asheville on Oct. 6. Minutes later, police blocked off the roads surrounding the area as search and rescue crews found more bodies.
Chimney Rock is a mountain village about 20 miles southeast of Asheville. No building or home in the village was left untouched by the raging floodwaters.
In the late 1800s, a family began charging visitors a quarter for a horseback ride up the mountain. Eventually, Chimney Rock became one of North Carolina’s first tourist attractions.
Along the Rocky Broad River, the backs of restaurants and gift shops that had riverfront balconies now dangle in mid-air. Multiple buildings along Main Street were swept from their foundations, while other structures were moved by flooding.
Chimney Rock Mayor Peter O’Leary operates Bubba O’Leary’s General Store with his wife.
“Most of these people here, if you look around, almost all of them are from somewhere else. They came here and fell in love with it. It gets ahold of you,” he said.
“Everything you take for granted has been washed away, literally. But we’ll recover. We’ll be back, and new memories will be built here.”
The landscape of the river abruptly changed because of the disaster.
“Literally, this river has moved,” village administrator Stephen Duncan said. “We saw a 1,000-year event. A geological event.”
Aaron Ellenburg is Rutherford County’s sheriff. He is a lifelong resident of the area that includes Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, two communities decimated by flooding. Lake Lure played a starring role as a Catskills resort in the 1987 classic film “Dirty Dancing.” Chimney Rock is home to a state park that is one of the oldest attractions in North Carolina.
“We had no idea it was going to be as bad as this. But we are counting our blessings because loss of life here is minimal compared to other nearby areas. I went to church this morning, and there was a gentleman there who lost 12 people in his family from this storm,” Ellenburg told The Epoch Times.
Ellenburg said that his office has received reports of more than 800 missing people, “but many of them are from a lack of communication.”
“We put teams together, go out and make contact with them, and confirm that they are still here. Those we cannot make contact with are considered missing,” he said.
Rick Austin lives with his wife on a fully self-sufficient mountaintop homestead in western North Carolina. The author of “Secret Garden of Survival,” he is a preparedness expert who was featured on “Doomsday Preppers.” Austin is also the founder of Prepper Camp, one of the nation’s largest survival training events, which was taking place as Hurricane Helene arrived in western North Carolina.
More than 1,000 attendees had traveled to Orchard Lake Campground near Saluda for the camp, so the decision was made to continue since “everyone could not go anywhere anyway,” he told The Epoch Times.
Without cellphone service, internet, and power, classes and workshops proceeded. Two attendees decided to use their chainsaws to clear roadways that allowed first responders to navigate around the Saluda area, Austin said.
“That is the mentality of the people who attend Prepper Camp. They weren’t going to just stay put while there is widespread destruction and people in need all around,” he said.
“A disaster like this has never happened before anywhere. The people who are actually doing the work are the churches and the individual organizations that are taking donated supplies and delivering them to people who are stuck and don’t have power. That is the spirit of Appalachia. We’re digging ourselves out.”
At the Flintrock Campground outside of Boone, recreational vehicles were thrown against each other and cabins were moved off their foundations from the flooding along a swollen river. Charlie Howell and his wife live here six months out of the year and spend the remaining six months in Key West, Florida.
He owns one of the three RVs that maintained power and saw little damage.
“We were fortunate. Many campsites here were destroyed, and most of the people left. You expect to have damage from a hurricane in South Florida, but not in the western North Carolina mountains,” Howell said.
