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

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my sister living near Asheville still doesn't have electricity or running water.

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The water problem in Asheville is that the North Fork Reservoir plant's main water lines were destroyed. They have been working to fix that for a couple of days now but slowed by the water levels that remain high in the creek. North Fork provides about 75% of the local water. The knock-on problem is the North Fork Reservoir was one of the purest sources of municipal water in the US but since the flooding it has very high turbidity apparently looking like chocolate milk. The processing plant is not designed to deal with water with near the suspended solids the reservoir has in it now. So getting back to pumping is just a part of the issue.

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Stepdaughter lives in Marshall. She told us that it looks like a war zone there. No water until December and Asheville is on curfew 7:30 to 7:30.

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Yeah, some places it’s 8/9pm. I don’t think they are planning for water to be restored to 75% capacity until early ‘25 from what they told us. Some over the h on r r we ls in Asheville have tractor trailers with water tankers feeding them. The ones without water are filling up 55 gal drums on each floor with pool water for toilets. Not sure what they will do when that runs out.

There are still real people in real communities that will band together when the going gets tough.

It’s pretty impressive seeing real people establish logistics and supply chain during an emergency. That bridge is awesome.

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Still a long way to go, but these baws are kicking arse.

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I have been watching the power restoration in WNC and it seemed they got finished with the "easy" repairs on Saturday and since then it slowed down significantly. They are slow but steady in all the counties except two. Buncombe has got 5% more of the total connections back on line just in the last 3 hours which is the biggest jump I have seen since the weekend. Yancey and particularly Mitchell* have seen very little progress since day one. The terrain and devastation apparently have a lot to do with that along with low population density which always puts you at the back of the line for restoration. Still over 60K out and most of them are in Buncombe (Asheville).

* Mitchell County is where the earlier interview with the lady in Red Hill was posted. She is the one that mentioned 100 possible bodies being flagged

That’s impressive.

I don’t think most people realize the topography and roads.

You can go for 25 miles or more on mountain roads with switchbacks.

And all those private bridges to get to private property…getting power to those people again is going to be a long process.

Last night we saw the utube from the guy in Yancey County who had built the elegant foot bridge from US 19E to his house and out buildings.
And how the river kept rising and he lost pretty much everything.
We were trying to figure out where he was and got to the NCDOT map of the area. The number of impassable roads is still mind bending; there won't be anything like a quick fix.
Repairing power lines...somebody is making hard decisions because on some of them, most of the houses are gone (and power poles and roads).

Yancey County is in a world of hurt.

I was proud of the Avery County, well Newland Mayor, who was on TV and spoke how his daughter didn’t even receive the full $750 from FEMA. She lost a lot and was only given $300.

I personally have distant family who have reported back similar situations.

I spent some time at Elk River’s air strip in Banner Elk over the weekend helping my mom and step dad, who runs a big contracting operation in the Boone area, unload planes and helping load side by sides and such. Between Avery, Mitchell and Yancey, there’s a lot of work to do on these mountain roads. And I’m glad a lot of these supplies are being meted out by the locals.

Can say the same for parts of Roan Mountain here in Carter County, TN. Folks are working hard to repair roads and such.

On a sliver of good news, our two high schools mostly impacted are going to resume football this Friday.

One school (Hampton High) is completely done for and will not qualify for any funding due to being one of only two remaining in the state that was technically in a flood zone. The state and Feds have deemed the property shut down basically. One of those historic gyms pretty much done, outdoor sporting fields wiped away. Just won state championship in boys basketball last year too (also won in 1960 when it was one classification in TN under Buck Van Huss, who won more than 1,340 games in career). Their football team is going to have to makeshift home games at other fields the remainder of the season.

Looks like they are going to merge two or three of our five county high schools into one big new high school now, in an elevated area, as the others are older as well.

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Given its mostly flood damage, it’s kinda odd as you have big stretches where you can’t even tell there was a storm, then you get near even a small creek and it looks like a bomb went off.

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The difference between flatlander flooding and mountain flooding. It is part of what resulted in the widely varying accounts of damage. People would argue on SM that someone couldn't be seeing what they were seeing but the differences just a few hundred yards away could be marked. Flatland floods are more like hurricanes and mountain floods are more like tornadoes.