Death Storm Helene

[superjohn]

Hopefully, @ctchamps and even the PITA Florida State visitor @billybud fared better than far too many in Asheville and numerous other hard hit areas in and near the NC mountains.

Underreported to date nationally, but the confluence of 2 storms (1 stalled out dumping rain on prior saturated areas even before Helene arrived), and reportedly resulted in as much as 20-30” of rain in some areas. Roads (interstate, state and local), railroad tracks, homes, businesses, cellular towers, etc flooded and washed away, landslides, no power, water and sewage treatment in some instances, no internet, mobile service, etc out. UNC Asheville, App State, etc closed for at least a week and likely more, etc, and sadly many lives likely lost. National Guard in NC and from other states, including CT, are deployed/deploying to help with rescue, recovery, infrastructure, etc.

Here’s one Asheville station report regarding the combined storms effects in the area: Home

A friend's son lives on Black Mountain in Asheville. He's okay but he had to rescue a family. His Shope Creek neighborhood is apocalyptic.

 

[TrueBlue22]

I live in Cherokee, NC. Luckily me and my girlfriend were away in Connecticut during Helen and we are also lucky enough to have family back home that are safe, and able to look after our animals during the flooding.

We are however, currently stranded with no real way of getting into that part of western North Carolina. On top of that, I work over the mountain in Gatlinburg, TN. With all the roads closed, even if I get home, I will have no way of getting to work that doesn’t take about 3 hours. Obviously, prayers for those who weren’t lucky enough to be away from the area this week.

Right now the word coming from friends and family back in the mountains is that things are much worse than the news is reporting. No cell service in most places, so a lot of the footage is taking a long time to release. Also, with cell service down, no one is really sure who is missing at the moment in some of the more rural areas. Not to paint a grim picture, but just sharing some more info from someone who lives in the area.

 

[husky429]

I live in Cherokee, NC. Luckily me and my girlfriend were away in Connecticut during Helen and we are also lucky enough to have family back home that are safe, and able to look after our animals during the flooding.

We are however, currently stranded with no real way of getting into that part of western North Carolina. On top of that, I work over the mountain in Gatlinburg, TN. With all the roads closed, even if I get home, I will have no way of getting to work that doesn’t take about 3 hours. Obviously, prayers for those who weren’t lucky enough to be away from the area this week.

Right now the word coming from friends and family back in the mountains is that things are much worse than the news is reporting. No cell service in most places, so a lot of the footage is taking a long time to release. Also, with cell service down, no one is really sure who is missing at the moment in some of the more rural areas. Not to paint a grim picture, but just sharing some more info from someone who lives in the area.

I think I've mentioned this before. My in-laws are from around 30 minutes from Cherokee. Their neighbor is famous for his 2 story trailer, lol.

Family hasn't left the driveway since the storm. 3 trees across, including one on BILs truck. And a bunch more trees on the road that no one has touched. Wild.

 

[superjohn]

I fear the death toll is going to skyrocket. A lot of these small Appalachian towns have no way of communicating with the outside world. Every conceivable bad thing associated with hurricanes seems to have happened through Florida's Big Bend, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee.

 

[Rocktheworld]

Hopefully the thousands of people along the Appalachian trail down there had the sense to get out

 

[AZHuskiePop]

We have a FSU troll who posts on the CR
Board Billy Bud who lives in Asheville
I’m hearing incredible destruction in the mountains of NC and Eastern Tennessee
When a section of an I 40 gets cubed out that’s almost incomprehensible. .
We hope everyone is okay regardless of who their team is .

 

[husky429]

My wife's family posted pictures of the local river. Must be 100 boats, docks, and boathouses stuck on a bridge. Almost like an ice dam.

There was water up to second story porches in town. Whole place is devastated.

 

[superjohn]

My wife's family posted pictures of the local river. Must be 100 boats, docks, and boathouses stuck on a bridge. Almost like an ice dam.

There was water up to second story porches in town. Whole place is devastated.

Where is the national news coverage? They were really light on news coverage leading up to the storm despite it being certain there was going to be mass devastation and there's a total lack of national coverage considering the gravity of the situation. I get that access and communication is difficult in these small towns but they aren't even covering it on the news channels. Where's the drone footage? Where are the national correspondents?

We get a light dusting of snow in NYC and it's wall to wall coverage for days. Entire towns are gone and people are missing all over Appalachian areas in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina and it's mostly crickets.

This is one of the worst hurricanes the US has seen in 100 years.

 

[Patman]

Where is the national news coverage? They were really light on news coverage leading up to the storm despite it being certain there was going to be mass devastation and there's a total lack of national coverage considering the gravity of the situation. I get that access and communication is difficult in these small towns but they aren't even covering it on the news channels. Where's the drone footage? Where are the national correspondents?

We get a light dusting of snow in NYC and it's wall to wall coverage for days. Entire towns are gone and people are missing all over Appalachian areas in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina and it's mostly crickets.

This is one of the worst hurricanes the US has seen in 100 years.

The press has ignored national disasters before. They were a massive flood in Tennessee back in around 2011... like once every 500 years. Barely covered it. So I'll let you think about that.

 

[controlfade]

The coverage has been scarce for sure and I’m in North Carolina (near Wilmington) all we have really seen is bits and pieces from the Asheville area where a dam broke and the entire area had to be evacuated by helicopter. We only got a little bit of rain

 

[Chin Diesel]

Where is the national news coverage? They were really light on news coverage leading up to the storm despite it being certain there was going to be mass devastation and there's a total lack of national coverage considering the gravity of the situation. I get that access and communication is difficult in these small towns but they aren't even covering it on the news channels. Where's the drone footage? Where are the national correspondents?

We get a light dusting of snow in NYC and it's wall to wall coverage for days. Entire towns are gone and people are missing all over Appalachian areas in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina and it's mostly crickets.

This is one of the worst hurricanes the US has seen in 100 years.

For one thing there aren't too many ways for news crews to get on site. Roads in every direction washed out and bridges gone.

 

[controlfade]

Massive mud slides in NC and their is no access ,

 

[superjohn]

For one thing there aren't too many ways for news crews to get on site. Roads in every direction washed out and bridges gone.

Of course don't put your people in the middle of the floods but they always have people on site or as close as they can reasonably get for major storms. This wasn't some unforeseen event. Where is the drone footage? Where are the reporters? Where are the people in studio? They've had their regularly scheduled programming on the news channels all day instead of reporting on this tragedy.

 

[Chin Diesel]

Of course don't put your people in the middle of the floods but they always have people on site or as close as they can reasonably get for major storms. This wasn't some unforeseen event. Where is the drone footage? Where are the reporters? Where are the people in studio? They've had their regularly scheduled programming on the news channels all day instead of reporting on this tragedy.

I don't know what to tell you. Every national news feed I view has multiple articles, videos and photo dumps.

 

[superjohn]

I don't know what to tell you. Every national news feed I view has multiple articles, videos and photo dumps.

Makes it even more weird they aren't putting it on TV.

 

[John]

Makes it even more weird they aren't putting it on TV.

Literally the lead story on NBC and CBS

 

[superjohn]

Literally the lead story on NBC and CBS

When? I had the TV on back and forth all day with the games and never saw them do a cut in for hurricane coverage.

Did they have people on the ground in the states reporting or just people in the news studio talking about it?

 

[John]

When? I had the TV on back and forth all day with the games and never saw them do a cut in for hurricane coverage.

Did they have people on the ground in the states reporting or just people in the news studio talking about it?

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Coverage of the latest global and U.S. breaking news stories by Lester Holt on NBCNews.com. Watch videos of breaking news, politics, health, lifestyle and more.

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[Scrutineer]

If not now, when?

When it gets to your neighborhood?

 

[TRuconnfan]

I am a lurker here… I live in Greenville SC and we were (surprised) and hammered. Many power crews stationed for Florida had to turn back and come here. National guard out as well. It is incredible the trees that are everywhere, all over the power lines and houses in Taylors (where I live)…huge trees completely uprooted. They are expecting power maybe by Friday and some places will be longer…much of our grid was wiped out. Even many with power have no internet and spotty cell service. I was one of the lucky ones to find and afford a hotel room yesterday with power and now internet In the part of Greenville not hit as bad.
60 minutes north of us into western NC is just devastation….near Asheville. The cutest little town Chimney Rock where my friends shop is was completely wiped out and I hear there are others like them. Hoping my friend is ok but probably wont know for a while.
This was a once in a generation event in our area and finally being online this morning the news coverage seems really sparse.

 

[Dove]

Where is the national news coverage? They were really light on news coverage leading up to the storm despite it being certain there was going to be mass devastation and there's a total lack of national coverage considering the gravity of the situation. I get that access and communication is difficult in these small towns but they aren't even covering it on the news channels. Where's the drone footage? Where are the national correspondents?

We get a light dusting of snow in NYC and it's wall to wall coverage for days. Entire towns are gone and people are missing all over Appalachian areas in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina and it's mostly crickets.

This is one of the worst hurricanes the US has seen in 100 years.

I took the day off. I had CNN and the Weather Channel on. Plenty of coverage. There is also X.

 

[uchuskies2009]

I am a lurker here… I live in Greenville SC and we were (surprised) and hammered. Many power crews stationed for Florida had to turn back and come here. National guard out as well. It is incredible the trees that are everywhere, all over the power lines and houses in Taylors (where I live)…huge trees completely uprooted. They are expecting power maybe by Friday and some places will be longer…much of our grid was wiped out. Even many with power have no internet and spotty cell service. I was one of the lucky ones to find and afford a hotel room yesterday with power and now internet In the part of Greenville not hit as bad.
60 minutes north of us into western NC is just devastation….near Asheville. The cutest little town Chimney Rock where my friends shop is was completely wiped out and I hear there are others like them. Hoping my friend is ok but probably wont know for a while.
This was a once in a generation event in our area and finally being online this morning the news coverage seems really sparse.

We're in Simpsonville and have power/internet. If you need anything that we can help you with, send me a DM and we would be happy to do what we can to help a fellow Husky fan out.

 

[TRuconnfan]

We're in Simpsonville and have power/internet. If you need anything that we can help you with, send me a DM and we would be happy to do what we can to help a fellow Husky fan out.

Thank you so much! Very kind of you but we are doing ok and we are lucky to have no damage and be able to find and afford a hotel, pretty close to you on Woodruff rd. My in-laws got their power back on in Greer yesterday as well if we need help. Saturday was scary though, we had to rush our cat to the emergency vet here at 6am and had to try multiple ways to get out to the main roads in the dark. The trees in the road were incredible and 3 pretty busy roads were blocked (still are!) until we found a small side road that was barely passable. We have driven over so many power lines the last 2 days that we barely even notice them now Honestly in that Greenville/Taylors area Im not even sure how we will have power by Friday.