(The Center Square) – Asheville, most populous mountain community in North Carolina, could only be reached by air.
Interstates as well as curvy “only way home” roads were closed. The death toll reached 103 in North Carolina, 232 in the South.
Hurricane Helene is arguably the worst natural disaster in state history. Hurricanes Floyd in 1999 and Hazel in 1954 have their place, as does Asheville’s Great Flood of 1916. Comparison is not apples to apples.
Yet Helene was staggering – $53 billion in damage as estimated by the governor’s office and having happened not near the coast but some 400 miles inland and Asheville, for example, 2,100 feet above sea level.
How it happened
Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It was expected to come north to the Appalachian Mountains; however, the rainfall total from its dissipation there exceeded all forecasts.
Some places got more than 30 inches, most were at 24 or more. Due to terrain, water often rushed before it pooled and flooded – very unlike the flooding that happens in the coastal plains.
AccuWeather said rainfall totals were 32.51 inches in Jeter Mountain, 31.36 inches in Busick, and 26.65 inches in Hughes.
Deaths
North Carolina fatalities linked to Hurricane Helene are 103, the Division of Public Health in the Department of Health and Human Services says.
Forty-three were killed in Buncombe County, 11 in Yancey, 10 in Henderson, and five each in Avery and Haywood counties. Twenty-two of the state’s 100 counties recorded a death.
Respective state officials say 49 were killed in South Carolina, 34 in Georgia, 25 in Florida, 18 in Tennessee, two in Virginia and one in Indiana. Numbers were confirmed by The Center Square based on information supplied by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; South Carolina Department of Public Safety; Georgia Emergency Management Agency; Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; and the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana.
Helene is the fourth most deadly hurricane from the Atlantic Basin in the last three-quarters of a century. Only Katrina (2005, deaths 1,392), Audrey (1957, deaths 416) and Camille (1969, deaths 256) killed more people.
Rescues
More than 1,600 personnel, including 55 search and rescue teams, rescued more than 2,100 people and 150 pets.
The state Department of Transportation erected more than 8,000 barricades and signs; used 1,600 employees and 68 contracted crews in recovery; and operated more than 1,000 chainsaws and 1,500 trucks, graders, backhoes and loaders.
Infrastructure
Water systems, energy grids and roads were victims of the catastrophe.
Nearly 150 water systems were damaged. More than 1 million were without power in the state at the peak of crisis. And road closure totals grew to more than 600 at a time in October, notably Interstates 40 and 26.
Interstate 40, a key commerce and tourism route between Asheville and Knoxville, Tenn., lost two eastbound lanes. The intracontinental route from Wilmington at the Atlantic Ocean to Barstow, Calif., at the Pacific Ocean washed out into the Pigeon River about 4 miles from the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
