I think they’re underreporting the sheer amount of damage Helene has caused. Entire towns are gone. 50 confirmed deaths already. Down power lines everywhere. Emergency responders are swamped. Stoplights are out. There’s a down live power line at the bottom of my mom’s mountain and the sheriff is like “yeah, I know. we called the power company and they’re not going shit.”
The water table is already full, the ground is saturated, lakes and ponds are draining into causeways and it’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. It looks like it’s going to be light misting rain but more flash flooding is possible and more lives and infrastructure may be lost. Many people are still in danger. We cannot begin to estimate how much damage has been done. Unlike Florida, Southern Appalachia wasn’t given evacuation notices or pre-warning of how devastating the storm was going to be, the storm path seems to have gone east instead of its projected path which was more to the west.
Asheville’s Arts District is straight up gone. Chimney Rock is gone. Multiple other small towns have been wiped off the map.
Hi. I live in the Asheville area. The reason there's no reporting is there's no cell signal anywhere in the area. The news can't even get in. We couldn't call anyone, all we had was the emergency radio and even they didn't have information because the news channels don't have connections either.
I am currently evacuated with my family in Charlotte. I'm disabled and one night without power was too much. It may be weeks before we have power.
We were not prepared. We had no reason to be prepared. Helene was supposed to top at cat 2 and veer west. Instead it landed at 4 and charged straight at us. I live on a hill so I was safe from flooding, but no less than 4 trees went down in our yard, two on our house, right above my head.
We are a temperate rainforest. There's nowhere for the water to go. This isn't supposed to happen.
Asheville is fucking devastated. I love my city and I'm heartbroken. Famously the City of Lesbians, the queerest city in the South. It remains to be seen what will happen after it's all said and done but it's fucking horrible. No one here has ever seen anything like this.
