BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helene

Subject: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: cnd
Date: 29 Sep 24 - 10:10 PM

I don't venture to the BS section here often, but felt this was worthwhile to mention. The impacts of Hurricane Helene have been DEVESTATING to the western North Carolina / eastern Tennessee region, and there's been shockingly little news about it. Entire towns have been wiped off the map -- literally. Many major roads into and out of the area have been washed out, there's no cell service, and many sources of food, water, and power are inoperative.

I don't have any campaigns to share or suggestions for places to donate to. Just wanted to raise awareness. While this region is crucial to the southeastern folk/trad music scene, more importantly, it's one of the poorest in the US and may never recover without serious outside help.

Seen countless other photos and videos on Instagram and Facebook which are from private accounts that can't be shared, but here's enough to get an idea of the damage.

https://x.com/JonBrownDC/status/1840512237569487208
https://x.com/Chicago1Ray/status/1840374572085870698
https://x.com/Nerdy_Addict/status/1840174075328843815
https://x.com/ReedTimmerUSA/status/1840499779685474732
https://www.facebook.com/100045877891331/photos/1070333521172568/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/1fscq7k/went_to_asheville_to_help_family_saturday_on_the/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAbLqVUxmL0/?hl=en&img_index=1

Thoughts, prayers, and everything else to those impacted.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: Mrrzy
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 08:33 AM

I live in Virginia. The news here is all over this.

My sister who lives in Asheville, currently only accessible by air(!), is off on an RV trip, luckily. A mountain, flooded. Whoda thunk it.

It was the unnamed prior storm that put my beach town in NC under 6' of water, still haven't heard from some of the people I know there. I rememberharing on the news that "parts of the town were under water" and sat bolt upright in bed, because that place is flat as a pancake. If some parts were under water, the whole town was.

Ubelievable mess.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 12:12 PM

My local Texas newspaper is in the McClatchy news group and one of their senior reporters pointed out that subscribing to the local paper provides full access to a couple of major papers in the affected area. I'll take a look, but anticipate extreme sadness from the viewing. The New York Times ran a multi-media mapping of the areas affected this morning and it is a huge muddy path.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: leeneia
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 04:22 PM

I've been trying to call sister-in-law in South Carolina, but I only get busy signals. The local paper said there was only one death (falling tree), but the victim was a man.

I suppose if she's in bad trouble, she can find a phone somehow and call me.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 08:10 PM

Leeneia, if she has a cell phone, often times texts (SMS) will get through when calls won't; they require far less bandwidth. Try sending some texts. Good luck with that.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 09:19 PM

Supplies arrive by plane and by mule in North Carolina as Helene’s death toll tops 130

Government officials and aid groups worked to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the hard-hit tourism hub of Asheville and its surrounding mountain towns. At least 40 people died in the county that includes Asheville.

One short paragraph from the article: "A woman cradled her child while people around her gathered on a hillside where they found cellphone service, many sending a simple text: “I’m OK.”"

Why western North Carolina was hit so hard

Western North Carolina suffered relatively more devastation because that’s where the remnants of Helene encountered the higher elevations and cooler air of the Appalachian Mountains, causing even more rain to fall.

Asheville and many surrounding mountain towns were built in valleys, leaving them especially vulnerable to devastating rain and flooding. Plus, the ground already was saturated before Helene arrived, said Christiaan Patterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“By the time Helene came into the Carolinas, we already had that rain on top of more rain,” Patterson said.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helen
From: cnd
Date: 30 Sep 24 - 09:57 PM

SRS, thanks for reminding me of Toberer's story. Since I like sharing images, here's a cool* image of his mule train delivering supplies: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1075277511269425&set=a.504130048384177.

* Cool, all things considered. Always great to see resiliency in these situations.

Subject: Flooding From Hurricane Helene
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Oct 24 - 03:53 PM

Could a Mudelf amend the thread title so it reads "Helene" please?

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helene
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Oct 24 - 04:55 PM

I've worked in a number of Forest Service and National Park Service areas that used mules to pack in gear for backcountry folks - in fire lookouts, or to camps where work was going to take a while, like places where they were building bridges. That was many years ago but I'm glad to see the practice is still alive and well.

The stories are heartrending, of all of the washed out roads and communities. People swept away, along with pets and livestock. These are resilient communities, rural and largely independent when it comes to keeping things running and building on their property, but this probably washed away tools and materials. Many of the loggers who moved to rural west coast logging communities at the turn of the last century relocated from western North Carolina. There were lots of Tarheels in Washington and Oregon mountain communities, and they kept in touch, traveling back and forth from Washington to North Carolina, to see family. Bryson City, Sylva, and Cherokee are names I remember people mentioning when they talked about family in NC. I worked in Gatlinburg as a ranger one summer in the Great Smokys and picked up the phone book for some small towns on the other side of the park in NC - names like Bryson, Nations, Green, all names I knew from Washington. Anyway, I can imagine an operation getting underway right now in those Cascade mountain communities ready to go help build back the NC communities.

I heard a story about flooding on the French Broad River, but didn't hear where the reporter was situated. That one runs from North Carolina into Tennessee (on the west side of the Eastern continental divide) and I used to cross it on my drive from where I was living in Kentucky to work each week in the Great Smoky Mountains. Google Maps has a red icon with wavy white lines to indicate flood information and I see one east of Knoxville and one labeled "Northeastern Tennessee floods" considerably north of the park. Though Kentucky was listed in the target zone as the storm moved it seems to have been spared a lot of that flooding this time around. They got clobbered hard last year.

All of those steep-sided little valleys in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina are part of the bucolic beautiful scenery when driving around in sunny weather, but in the heavy rain they channel the water so fast it's easy to see how the damage happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helene
From: cnd
Date: 03 Oct 24 - 08:19 AM

I'd never heard of the NC to Washington connection, SRS, thanks for sharing that. Western NC is unfortunately very economically depressed (and not improving in that regard with many paper mills in towns like Canton shutting down), so it's not a shock that there's lots of expats.

The livestock is an underappreciated element for sure. I saw a video online of a bridal party whose wedding was canceled by the flooding saving horses and goats left at the 'luxury ranch' their event was meant to be at. Most farmers just simply aren't prepared with enough trailer space to transport all their animals in the event of a disaster.

The French Broad is a major river in the area, but if I had to bet, it was likely Marshall, which is bisected by the river, or Hot Springs. In Marshall, the local high school building is on an island in the middle of the river.

Much of I-40 at the NC/TN border was wiped out, and current reports estimate that it won't be fixed until late 2025 -- normally an impressive time for DOT work, but certainly difficult for the area since both it and I-26, the other main artery between the two areas, are damaged from the storm. Currently the best routes around are taking US-74 into SE Tennessee or I-81 north into Virginia.

As an avid hiker, I'd be curious to know if your rangering in the area led to the discovery of any 'hidden gem' spots -- feel free to PM me to avoid thread drift. Obviously now is not the time to hike them, but I'd love to keep them in my back pocket for later if there are any :)

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helene
From: Charmion
Date: 03 Oct 24 - 10:51 AM

John Oliver covered this disaster on his 29 September show on HBO, which I saw on the Canadian streamer Crave. In combination with the coverage in the New York Times it made a chilling survey.

In a Facebook post, Mudcat member Fortunato (Chance Shiver) reported that his propane supplier heroically came through to refuel the generator that keeps his hilltop house functioning. He lives in the rural community of Leicester, near Asheville. I'm impressed that he could find anything nice to say in his current situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Flooding From Hurricane Helene
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Oct 24 - 11:03 AM

cnd, the job I had in the Smoky Mountains was an afterthought; I'd turned down an offer, then the one I intended to go to fell through, so I called them back and told them I was available. They had a job for a guy who was barely ambulatory, all visitor center stuff, that needed filling when his doctor told him that was even too much. I was given a couple of popular trail tours to do each week, but no exploring. I was given a book some years later by someone from that area, and it describes one of the oldest cabins in the mountains, built of yellow poplar (tulip tree) that was missed when the NPS folks went in and foolishly removed all of the human habitations in park lands in Tennessee and North Carolina. This might be on the Blue Ridge Parkway. If I find the book I'll PM a few details.

I'm sharing the above somewhat off topic because I actually had an article to come back and share this morning. Let's see if it goes through as a gift.

Dad treks 27 miles on Helene-flooded roads to get to daughter’s wedding
‘I just kept putting one foot in front of the other,’ said David Jones, who trekked more than five hours to walk his daughter down the aisle.

“By the grace of God and a lot of work, I was able to get my right leg out of the mud but it sucked my shoe off and I knew I wasn’t going to make it without shoes,” Jones said.

When both legs were freed, he managed to dig his shoe out and proceeded to crawl on his hands and knees over the debris until he made it to solid ground. He then continued with his trek.

Since there was no cell service, Jones — who moved about a month ago from Johnson City to Boiling Springs — did not have GPS to guide him.

“I was familiar enough with the area, I knew that I needed to stay on that road,” he said.

Gnu would have loved this story. A bonus - the father and daughter are both engineers.