The mountain towns of North Carolina have been devastated by Hurricane Helene. The storm brought historic flooding that tore through the region, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Hurricane Helene and other storms dumped a devastating amount of water on the U.S. Southeast recently. In a quick analysis reported by @NewsHour, researchers @BerkeleyLab estimated how much climate change contributed to that amount of rain: https://t.co/P6xMJ97VZT
— DOE Office of Science (@doescience) October 7, 2024
Brett Johnson, a 59-year-old resident of Chimney Rock, said the town is “forever changed.” Homes were swept away when the Broad River swelled to ten times its usual size.
“There were beautiful homes all along here, where now there’s just dirt and rocks,” Johnson said. “Where that bank should be there was a brewery, Mexican restaurants, hotels — they’re all just gone.”
On Monday, October 7, City of Asheville Sanitation will have crews out servicing both regular Monday and Tuesday trash customers. More information here: https://t.co/C2nphBoimK pic.twitter.com/TO48HsnxOe
— City of Asheville (@CityofAsheville) October 5, 2024
While hurricanes are often contained to the coasts, climate change is supercharging them and bringing devastation to communities hundreds of miles inland. Hurricane Helene highlights the need to create climate-resilient infrastructure across the U.S.https://t.co/thaPtZVCWa
— NRDC 🌎🏡 (@NRDC) October 5, 2024
Chimney Rock, usually packed with tourists on a beautiful day, is now deluged with cops, clean-up crews, and engineers from the North Carolina Department of Transportation mapping the damage. The few residents who remain have referred to themselves as “the sole survivors.”
Lorrie and I have been following the aftermath of #HurricanHelene. @SullenbergerAM and its staff were spared in Charlotte, but the devastation in other parts of North Carolina is heartbreaking. https://t.co/RGNoT2ZCgk
— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) October 4, 2024
Teddy Cooper, a 53-year-old resident of nearby Lake Lure, said even a week after the storm, residents still looked traumatized and shocked.
“Chimney Rock is utterly devastated,” Cooper said. “Most everything’s gone. The land’s not even there anymore.”
Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend coastline as a Category 4 hurricane before moving northeast into Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, North and South Carolina.
In North Carolina, at least 35 people died in the Asheville area, and a tornado struck Rocky Mount. Chimney Rock is just one of numerous small towns across Appalachia left ravaged by Helene and largely cut off from the outside world due to washed-away roads and ongoing power outages. As Helene brought once-in-a-thousand-year rains, the Broad River swelled, swallowing up swaths of the town.
Hurricane Helene devastates mountain towns
“You could see houses just dropping into the water, one after the other. They fell like dominos and once they hit the water it just ground them up, chewed them up into nothingness,” Johnson said.
Few were spared even well above the river. Rains pouring down the mountainsides brought mudslides and ripped the foundations from homes or sent trees toppling through rooftops. The local communities are barely able to even reach one another.
Just days ago Bat Cave and Chimney Rock were connected by a 2.4-mile road — now only about 300 yards of that route remains intact. Lake Lure and Chimney Rock have been completely cut off. “For the last three or four days helicopters have been constantly flying up and down the gorge looking for bodies,” Johnson said.
“All our food is rapidly, rapidly deteriorating.”
Helene has become the deadliest hurricane to hit the US in nearly half a century aside from Hurricane Katrina. The death toll is only expected to rise as responders continue to comb through the wreckage for hundreds of missing people. The Johnsons intend to spend the next year living in an RV away from Bat Cave and Chimney Rock once they repair their home’s foundation and remove a 150-foot tree from their living room roof.
They are unsure how long it will be before the communities are able to rebuild even the most basic infrastructure. “There won’t be a car drive up the road to our house for at least another year,” Johnson said.
