Several small towns and villages in North Carolina have been destroyed by raging floodwaters fueled by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.
Shocking footage captured a powerful torrent of muddy brown water racing down what was a pristine green hillside, while the eerie sound of an emergency alert siren can be heard whining in the background.
The sudden waterfall blasts away anything in its path including wooden buildings and family cars which are simply tossed aside by the surging waters like discarded toys.
The storm has washed away roads and damaged others while leaving homes without power and cellphone service across much of southern Appalachia.
There have been close to 60 storm-related deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia leaving countless worried relatives unable to reach loved ones.
Kate Pace was one of a number taking to social media desperate for news about her missing parents.
‘It’s been about 24 hours since we last heard from my parents. The Spruce Pine / Burnsville area of Western North Carolina has been decimated by the storm. I recognize cellular service is deeply impacted,’ Pace wrote.
‘I also recognize maybe there is emergency info. I haven’t seen yet. If anyone has additional details on rescue efforts in that region please drop me a message. Thank you.’
Among those also waiting for news was also Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her she was going to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began hitting Asheville.
Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, hasn’t been able to reach her since then.
‘I think that people are just completely stuck,’ she said. ‘My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,’ she said on Saturday.
‘The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.’
Cavanaugh said her sister told her she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin, ‘and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.’
At least 10 people were killed in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper said on Saturday.
In South Carolina, at least 19 are dead including two Saluda County firefighters.
Georgia saw at least 17 people die while in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed the number of people who died to be 11, including several people who drowned in Pinellas County.
In North Carolina alone, more than 400 roads remained closed on Saturday as floodwaters began to recede and revealing the extent of the devastation.
Governor Cooper said supplies were being airlifted to the western part of the state, and Buncombe County officials said Interstate 26 between Asheville and South Carolina had reopened but most other routes into the city were impassible leaving the town almost completely cut off.
The tourist hub known for its arts scene, home to about 94,000 people, was unusually still after floodwaters swamped neighborhoods known for drawing visitors including Biltmore Village and the River Arts District, home to numerous galleries, shops and breweries.
There have also been hundreds of water rescues. Among those rescued was nurse Janetta Barfield, whose car was swamped on Friday morning as she left an overnight shift at Asheville’s Mission Hospital.
She said she watched a car in front of her drive through standing water and thought it was safe to proceed. But her car stalled, and within minutes water had filled her front seat up to her chest. A nearby police officer helped her to safety.
‘It was unbelievable how fast that creek got just in like five minutes,’ Barfield said.
Early Saturday morning, many gas stations were closed because they didn’t have electricity and the few that were open had hourlong lines wrapped around the block.
Where traffic lights were still off, drivers treated the intersections as four-way stops.
More than 700,000 customers were without power across North Carolina, including about 100,000 in Buncombe County.
In Asheville, there was no cellular service and no timeline for restoration. Residents were also directed to boil their water. Local officials said they were working on setting up hubs to distribute food and water.
‘We have had some loss of life,’ County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters. However, he said they were not ready to report specifics as they were hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages.
Police Chief Michael Lamb said his department had a list of about 60 people who relatives had not been able to reach and were seeking welfare checks.
Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.
‘It’s not that we were not prepared, but this is going to another level,’ Sheriff Quentin Miller said. ‘To say this caught us off guard would be an understatement.’
About 30 miles southeast of Asheville in the town of Edneyville, Genevieve Preece was grateful that her family’s home was largely spared and still had water, power and Wi-Fi. Many neighbors were less fortunate.
Preece, who owns a utility contracting firm, opened her home as a place of refuge for people who needed to fill up water jugs or get in contact with worried family members. Her husband spent hours cutting trees to clear roads with neighbors.
‘We need help badly, but we are all doing what we can,’ Preece said. ‘It will be months or years to put us back together again.’
In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee and other officials toured the northeastern part of the state by helicopter Saturday. He called the Lee ‘heartbreaking.’
‘There’s a great deal of damage, a great deal of heartache, a great deal of work to be done,’ Lee said.
U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger expressed disbelief at the extent of the damage.
‘It’s something like we’ve never seen in this part of the state. Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in East Tennessee?’
In Greene County, Tennessee, the threat from a stressed dam had passed by Saturday afternoon.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which had warned residents overnight that the Nolichucky Dam could breach, said a thorough review determined it was ‘stable and secure.’ It was one of several being closely monitored.
Along the Pigeon River, the small Tennessee city of Newport suffered heavy flooding.
Kendale Ball, who opened his Simpl Cafe in June after relocating from Knoxville, said the water reached nearly thigh-high.
‘We never anticipated it to be this devastating,’ he said of the storm.
They tried to move some equipment ahead of the flooding but left town when an emergency evacuation was ordered.
‘I know we lost our walk-in cooler, all the refrigeration. We’ll have to assess some of the other stuff.’
In Unicoi County, where the people were rescued from the roof of a hospital on Friday, Elin Fisher and her husband had to move their camper three times to stay ahead of rising waters. They also helped to move eight other campers.
‘We would move things and go, “Oh, we’re 30 feet above the waterline,” go help somebody else move their thing to that level, and go, “Oh. We’ve got to move. Again.” And it was just really, really rapid,’ said Fisher.
In the middle of the final move, officials closed the road.
‘All of our belongings and our home is on the other side of the river, and we can´t get to it,’ she said.
In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp said on Saturday that it ‘looks like a bomb went off’ after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air.
The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.
It unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina, where rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government came to help.
One community, Spruce Pine, recorded over 2 feet of rain from Tuesday through Saturday.
In Atlanta, 11.12 inches fell over 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878.
On Saturday evening, President Joe Biden was briefed on the impact of the hurricane and directed FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall to focus on speeding up support, including the immediate deployment of more search and rescue teams in North Carolina.
Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone for South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it came ashore just north of Charleston in 1989.
