ASHEVILLE — Isolated and without electricity or phone service since Hurricane Helene inflicted devastation across the Southeast nearly a week ago, residents in the mountains of western North Carolina are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating.
At the town square in Black Mountain, local leaders stood atop a picnic table shouting updates about when power might be restored. Alongside a fencerow, a makeshift message board listed the names of people still missing. And mules delivered medical supplies to mountaintop homes.
While government cargo planes brought food and water into the hardest-hit areas Wednesday and rescue crews waded through creeks searching for survivors, those who made it through the storm, whose death toll has topped 180, leaned on one another — not technology.
“I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t know what was going to happen next. But I got out and I’m alive,” said Robin Wynn, who lost power at her Asheville home early Friday and was able to grab a bag of canned goods and water before getting to a shelter despite water up to her knees.
She’s now now back home and said her neighbors have been watching out for one another and said plenty of people have come around to make sure everyone has a hot meal and water.
President Joe Biden flew over the devastation in North and South Carolina on Wednesday, getting a firsthand look at the mess left by a storm that now has killed 182 people, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.
Before arriving, he announced the Defense Department will send 1,000 active-duty soldiers to help distribute food, water and supplies.
In remote mountain areas, helicopters hoisted the stranded to safety while search crews waded through floodwaters and moved toppled trees so they could look door to door for survivors. In some places, homes teetered on hillsides and riverbanks that had been washed away.
More than 1.1 million customers still had no power Wednesday in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene tore far inland after barreling over Florida’s Gulf Coast six days ago as a Category 4 hurricane. Deaths have been reported in six states: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, in addition to the Carolinas.
Helping one another in the hardest-hit areas
Anna Ramsey said fallen trees left her family stranded for several days, so they’ve bailed water from a creek in their backyard to flush toilets and cooked on a propane grill.
“We have no water; we have no power; but I think it’s also been humbling,” she said while her two children carried water in plastic bags from a distribution site in Asheville. “It’s been humbling … what we need to do for ourselves.”
The widespread damage and outages affecting communications infrastructure left many people without stable access to the internet and cell service.
Zeb Smathers, the mayor in Canton, North Carolina, said the streets were filled with people holding their phones in the air “trying to catch a cellphone signal like it’s a butterfly.”
Eric Williamson, who works at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, normally makes home visits to members who can’t physically get to church. This week, he’s their lifeline, delivering food that meets dietary restrictions and tossing out food that had spoiled.
He has a handwritten list of everyone he needs to visit. “They don’t have telephone service, even if they have a landline, a lot of that isn’t working,” Williamson said.
Volunteers in Asheville gathered before going out to help find people who have been unreachable because of phone and internet outages. They took along boxes of drinking water and instructions to return in person with their results.
Even notifying relatives of people who died in the storm has been difficult.
“That has been our challenge, quite honestly, is no cell service, no way to reach out to next of kin,” said Avril Pinder, an official in Buncombe County where at least 61 people have died. “We have a confirmed body count, but we don’t have identifications on everyone or next-of-kin notifications.”
Biden and Harris get a firsthand look
Biden surveyed the flooded roads, downed power lines and piles of debris in the Carolinas from a helicopter as he and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to different parts of the Southeast.
Biden has estimated the recovery will cost billions. “People are scared to death. This is urgent,” he said Tuesday.
Harris traveled to neighboring Georgia where she said the president had approved a request from Georgia’s governor for the federal government to pick up the tab for debris removal and emergency protective measures for three months.
The president plans on traveling to the disaster areas in Florida and Georgia on Thursday.
Devastation from Florida to Tennessee
Employees at a plastics factory in rural Tennessee who kept working last week until water flooded their parking lot and the power went out at the plant were among those killed. The floodwaters swept 11 workers away, and only five were rescued. Two are confirmed dead.
Now Tennessee state authorities said they are investigating the company that owns the factory after some employees said they weren’t allowed to leave in time to avoid the storm’s impact.
Hospitals and health care organizations in the Southeast mostly stayed open despite dealing with blackouts, wind damage, supply issues and flooding. Many hospitals halted elective procedures, while only a few closed completely.
It may be weeks, though, before water is fully restored in Asheville, which supplies almost all of Buncombe County’s 275,000 residents. Thousands of feet of pipe from one reservoir were washed out and will have to be rebuilt, and a second intake is not working, said water system spokesperson Clay Chandler.
“There are portions of our distribution system that are going to have to be completely rebuilt,” Chandler said.
In Florida, coastal communities were still trying to clear huge piles of debris stacked on roadsides and tons of sand pushed inland from massive storm surge.
Soldiers being deployed to NC mountains
Deployment of 1,000 active-duty soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Liberty to aid FEMA in essential services efforts in western North Carolina has been approved by President Joe Biden.
Biden was in North Carolina today, touring flood damaged areas by air and met with Cooper at the NC Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh.
The Fort Liberty troops are in addition to more than than 6,500 National Guardsmen that have been activated in the southern states hit by Hurricane Helene.
More than 1,000 North Carolina National Guard soldiers are deployed in North Carolina and per Governor Roy Cooper’s office, the Guardsmen have conducted more than 1,400 rescues and delivered more than 700,000 pounds in supplies.
As of 5:30 p.m. today, there were 337,161 customers in the affected area who were still without power.
A.P. Dillon contributed to this report.
