SWANNANOA, N.C. — Isolated and without electricity or phone service since Hurricane Helene inflicted devastation across the Southeast nearly a week ago, residents in the mountains of western North Carolina are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping.
At the town square in Black Mountain, local leaders stood atop a picnic table shouting updates about when power might be restored. Alongside a fencerow, a makeshift message board listed the names of people still missing. And mules delivered medical supplies to mountaintop homes. Residents who haven’t been able to shower in days were collecting water from creeks to flush their toilets.
President Joe Biden, visiting the area on Wednesday, praised the Democratic governor of North Carolina and the Republican governor of South Carolina for their responses to the storm, saying in the wake of disasters, “we put politics aside.”
While government cargo planes brought food and water into the hardest-hit areas Wednesday and rescue crews waded through creeks searching for survivors, those who made it through the storm, whose death toll has topped 180, leaned on one another — not technology.
“I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t know what was going to happen next. But I got out and I’m alive,” said Robin Wynn, who lost power at her Asheville home early Friday and was able to grab a bag of canned goods and water before getting to a shelter despite water up to her knees.
She's now back home and said her neighbors have been watching out for one another and said plenty of people have come around to make sure everyone has a hot meal and water.
Biden and Harris get a firsthand look
Biden flew over the devastation in North and South Carolina on Wednesday, getting a firsthand look at the mess left by a storm that now has killed 182 people, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.
Speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina, Biden said, “Our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can.”
That includes a commitment from the federal government to foot the bill for debris removal and emergency protective measures for six months. The money will address the impacts of landslides and flooding and will cover costs of first responders, search and rescue teams, shelters, and mass feeding.
“We’re not leaving until you’re back on your feet completely,” Biden said.
Before arriving, he announced the Defense Department will send 1,000 active-duty soldiers to help distribute food, water and supplies.
Biden said the damage from Hurricane Helene and others storms demonstrates the real-world impacts of climate change.
”No one can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,” Biden said, adding, “storms are getting stronger and stronger.”
Harris traveled to neighboring Georgia where she said the president had approved a request from Georgia’s governor for the federal government to pick up the tab for debris removal and emergency protective measures for three months.
The president plans on traveling to the disaster areas in Florida and Georgia on Thursday.
Helping one another in the hardest-hit areas
In remote mountain areas, helicopters hoisted the stranded to safety while search crews waded through floodwaters and moved toppled trees so they could look door to door for survivors. In some places, homes teetered on hillsides and riverbanks that had been washed away.
More than 1.1 million customers still had no power Wednesday in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene tore far inland after barreling over Florida’s Gulf Coast six days ago as a Category 4 hurricane. Deaths have been reported in six states: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, in addition to the Carolinas.
Anna Ramsey said fallen trees left her family stranded for several days, so they’ve bailed water from a creek in their backyard to flush toilets and cooked on a propane grill.
“We have no water; we have no power; but I think it’s also been humbling,” she said while her two children carried water in plastic bags from a distribution site in Asheville. “It’s been humbling ... what we need to do for ourselves.”
The widespread damage and outages affecting communications infrastructure left many people without stable access to the internet and cell service.
Zeb Smathers, the mayor in Canton, North Carolina, said the streets were filled with people holding their phones in the air “trying to catch a cellphone signal like it’s a butterfly.”
Eric Williamson, who works at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, normally makes home visits to members who can’t physically get to church. This week, he’s their lifeline, delivering food that meets dietary restrictions and tossing out food that had spoiled.
He has a handwritten list of everyone he needs to visit. “They don’t have telephone service, even if they have a landline, a lot of that isn’t working,” Williamson said.
Volunteers in Asheville gathered before going out to help find people who have been unreachable because of phone and internet outages. They took along boxes of drinking water and instructions to return in person with their results.
Even notifying relatives of people who died in the storm has been difficult.
“That has been our challenge, quite honestly, is no cell service, no way to reach out to next of kin,” said Avril Pinder, an official in Buncombe County where at least 61 people have died. “We have a confirmed body count, but we don’t have identifications on everyone or next-of-kin notifications.”
Devastation from Florida to Tennessee
Employees at a plastics factory in rural Tennessee who kept working last week until water flooded their parking lot and the power went out at the plant were among those killed. The floodwaters swept 11 workers away, and only five were rescued. Two are confirmed dead.
Now Tennessee state authorities said they are investigating the company that owns the factory after some employees said they weren’t allowed to leave in time to avoid the storm’s impact.
Hospitals and health care organizations in the Southeast mostly stayed open despite dealing with blackouts, wind damage, supply issues and flooding. Many hospitals halted elective procedures, while only a few closed completely.
It may be weeks, though, before water is fully restored in Asheville, which supplies almost all of Buncombe County’s 275,000 residents. Thousands of feet of pipe from one reservoir were washed out and will have to be rebuilt, and a second intake is not working, said water system spokesperson Clay Chandler.
“There are portions of our distribution system that are going to have to be completely rebuilt,” Chandler said.
In Florida, coastal communities were still trying to clear huge piles of debris stacked on roadsides and tons of sand pushed inland from massive storm surge.