A devastating flood in Western North Carolina has left residents grappling with unimaginable losses. Anita Crowder, who recently lost her father, finds herself facing a completely transformed landscape as floodwaters swept through her childhood home, taking precious memories and possessions with them.
“A hundred years from now, they will be talking about this flood,” said one resident in Western North Carolina , where the extent of the disaster is only beginning to emerge.Updated: 31 seconds agoAnita Crowder and her partner, Steve Calloway, outside her late father's home.
Calloway rummages through the muddy and mildew riddled house where Crowder's father and stepmother lived. Crowder tried to salvage some documents and personal effects from the home. Entire towns lie in ruins. Roads large and small are washed out. Search crews continue to scour the mountainous terrain in helicopters, on all-terrain vehicles and even on horseback to check on souls still unaccounted for in rural outposts. Many residents still have no power or cell signal or running water, even as a wave of aid flowed in over recent days.
One was the sense that Western North Carolina, with its high elevation, inland location and mild seasons, is a safe harbor in an age of more extreme weather. This, the thinking went, is a place more and more people are destined to flee to escape rising seas, stronger storms and the crippling heat elsewhere in the country.“For someone like myself who studies these deeply over many years and understands them quite well,” said Smith, the NOAA scientist, “they can still surprise and shock us.
As families gathered to grill food that would soon spoil, he wondered how dire conditions were in so many communities that weren’t as fortunate as his own. The autumn leaves will come and go without the usual hordes of tourists clogging the Blue Ridge Parkway and filling up the inns and restaurants that help fuel the local economy. The woolly worm caterpillar race won’t happen at the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk. The famous Biltmore Estate sits closed.
In a place known as “Beer City USA,” with dozens of breweries, it can be hard to stand out as a small neighborhood taphouse. But the packed house had Brown optimistic that October would be a busy month. “We had some good momentum,” he said. On Thursday, though he learned the brewery would be closing for now, he said: “I hate that we’re shutting down. … But it is a little bit of a relief.”Porter Edwards, 10, helps his father clean up debris at Mad Co. Brew House in Marshall, N.C. A week after Helene, the skies above Western North Carolina buzz with constant traffic from private planes and small helicopters bringing in donations.
“I used to be able to buy formula and diapers” for their toddler and 8-month-old, Abrahamian said. The reality now feels more dire - “everybody’s babies were running out of diapers at the same time.” Wipes were gone too. But on Friday, the group’s offices were busy with volunteers organizing food and supply drops. Others helped Spanish-speakers navigate the FEMA application process. The Mexican embassy sent staff and money.Garcia Rodrigues got ready for work the following morning and realized she couldn’t get out or reach anyone because cell service was down. She was rescued - she believes by police - and her brother-in-law was able to pick her up amid the driving rain and flooded roads.
Not far away, Joseph McGinnis lived in a serene creekside apartment. When his girlfriend came to visit from Raleigh, they spent weekends cooking and watching movies. In the evenings, he walked his Siberian husky, Romeo, around the complex and sat outside to listen to the trickle of the water.After Helene’s torrents arrived, that idyllic trickle turned into a raging torrent that swept five feet of water through McGinnis’s home.
Flood Western North Carolina Devastation Loss Recovery
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