re: Helene - Recovery Begins...Devastating Flash Flooding in Western NC and Eastern TN

I-40 is going to be out for possibly six months. I-26 is out for a while. There is really no easy way to get from eastern TN into western NC right now, especially if you're in an 18 wheeler.

News this morning said that two routes are open, neither for large vehicles.

No commercial vehicles on US 441 from Gatlinburg to Cherokee.

And the Dragon is open, but it has a length limit on fruck plus trailer.

Taking the interstate north from North Carolina to Wytheville Va and then west and down to Knoxville is a good pair of roads. The bridge that's out in Erwin TN, might have a detour, but it isn't for big loads either.

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Taking the interstate north from North Carolina to Wytheville Va and then west and down to Knoxville is a good pair of roads

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81 is a really good road

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And the Dragon is open, but it has a length limit on fruck plus trailer.

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One idiot trucker already had it blocked for a day attempting it. They got Tennessee and North Carolina troopers stationed on either side now to stop them from blocking that access point again.

Been busy hooking up generators, finding gas and helping neighbors with trees but want to say it’s amazing how civil people in the Augusta Georgia area have been. There is a high level of frustration of course but folks are still mostly courteous and helping one another. It’s been a week tomorrow morning around 6 AM without power for almost everyone and Richmond County (Augusta) has not had water since Friday afternoon. The damage in the Augusta area is staggering but compared to the hell people in North Carolina and Tennessee are going through being without power and water seems like child’s play.

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I-40 is going to be out for possibly six months.

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6 months my arse.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they have everything done before the end of 2025.

Anyone aware of a decent charity to donate a little money to that will mostly go to help my fellow American citizens?

We know what this feels like too in our area.

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Anyone aware of a decent charity to donate a little money to that will mostly go to help my fellow American citizens?

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Samaritan’s Purse. Franklin Graham’s charity based in Boone.

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some people are just satisfied with mediocrity i guess.

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Trust me your parents learned to swallow that bitter pill many years ago.


The reality is you are whinging about the wrong group of people, though doing it to the right group of people currently is extremely callous.

People know they are in or near the cone days if not a week out. If they make proper plans and contingencies at that point the 12 to 24-hour notice to GTFO! is easy to facilitate. I understand some people just don't have the economic means to do it there are a lot of people that just fail to plan and execute. Humans are a gambling species we gamble every day. I make dozens of cost-benefit analyses every day, so often it goes on at near the lizard brain region. For a number of reasons people just don't leave, hell I am even worse. Multiple times I have been 800 miles away far from any variation in the cone and actually gone to our camp right on the track. Even then I could have secured things and left, I didn't. Ultimately it is a dumb decision but I have escaped the consequences of my gamble.

In the end the NWS gave people in the devastation area plenty of warning especially had they preplanned when they had been in the cone for days.


The weather forecasters did their job within the current abilities to predict an almost incomprehensibly complex system. People didn't listen to them for a variety of human reasons sometimes we simply choose wrong when deciding on a course of action but the information was there.


To the intelligent and sane people in ITT I reiterate this is the wrong to to apportion blame. Many of us ITT have made the same poor decisions and by the grace of God have avoided the consequences. However, when you have a chucklefrick trying to shift blame onto the group of people that are giving us the best information to make good decisions something has to be said.

USGS has updated their landslide count

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As of 6:34 p.m. Thursday, the Hurricane Helene Landslide Observations Dashboard listed 127 total landslides, the majority of which occurred in the mountains of North Carolina. This is up from 73 reported landslides on the map as of 9 p.m. Wednesday.

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Of those, 111 are considered flagged landslides. Flagged landslides are described as slides that impacted rivers, roads, and structures

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LINK