By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-01 09:14:23 | Updated at 2024-10-01 11:37:10
2 hours ago
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In southern Appalachia, blocked roads and bad cellphone service have made it hard to find hundreds of people who are still unaccounted for.
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Family Survives Hurricane but Is Left With Just One Suitcase
Hurricane Helene left Aaron Smith, his wife, two sons and dog with nothing but a single suitcase. They are some of the many victims state and federal crews are working to aid after the storm devastated southern Appalachia.
It’s horrendous. There’s no roads. There’s no trees. It’s just water. There’s nothing left. We have one suitcase, really. And so trying to figure out four people and a dog out of one suitcase is just surreal. When it comes to where we’re going to go from here, I guess anywhere but here. I don’t see anything to go back to. The firefighters are telling us it’s going to be at least six months before we see our house again. And, frankly, I doubt very much that it’ll be that fast.
Oct. 1, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET
Rescuers continued to fan out across the North Carolina mountains on Tuesday morning, scouring the region for missing people and rushing supplies to the many communities that were still in dire need of food, water and power after Hurricane Helene.
As of Monday evening, more than 120 people across six states had died as a result of the storm, which made landfall late last week, and the toll was expected to rise. Almost a third of those killed were in the county surrounding Asheville, N.C.
Throughout southern Appalachia, many of the roads that had until recently served as lifelines for small mountainside towns were flooded, destroyed or blocked by debris. In some areas of the Carolinas, power was still scarce after flooding from the storm submerged electrical substations.
And in communities all across the South, cellphone service — at precisely the time when it couldn’t be needed more — was spotty or nonexistent.
The scope of the damage left state and federal politicians reaching for superlatives on Monday. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said that the storm was “unprecedented.” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina described the destruction as “beyond belief.” Vice President Kamala Harris called the damage “heartbreaking,” and President Biden said the hurricane was “history-making.”
Mr. Biden promised long-term aid and said that he would visit North Carolina for a briefing and to survey the damage from the air on Wednesday. He also said that he planned to visit Florida and Georgia as soon as possible.
