This story has been updated to add new information.
MEAT CAMP, N.C. – The home of Carolyn and Clifford Coffee is less than 10 miles from Boone, a North Carolina mountain town popular with tourists and a college campus nestled between streams and steep hills.
The two-lane road leading there winds up along Meatcamp Creek through cornfields and ranches, but is now covered with washed-out pavement, bridges, collapsed power lines and damaged homes. They are scattered.
Couple Carolyn (77) and Clifford (80) have lived here for 40 years. Clifford built the house himself by linking two trailers together. But Hurricane Helen’s torrential rains, which caused deadly landslides and flooding, left Carolyn terrified. “We just prayed to God,” she said.
Their home survived, but getting support in such a rural and mountainous area proved difficult. Many areas lack electricity, water, and cell phone service. And it will take a long time to rebuild the area and make it safe from floods and landslides.
“I want to move,” she said, looking at her husband. “He doesn’t want to do that.”
Days after Hurricane Helen dumped up to 30 inches of rain in parts of North Carolina and killed at least 200 people across the Southeast, residents in nearby Boone are cleaning up flood damage to homes and infrastructure. There is. Power, cell phone service and many businesses have been restored.
But in Watauga County and other nearby rural areas, landslides scarred the slopes of the Appalachians and storms sent water roaring into narrow valleys, causing more damage to roads, homes and the power grid. Ta. Approximately 200 county roads remained impassable. Rescuers reached some residents on foot and on horseback.
Officials, recovery volunteers and residents say the same factors that made the storm so devastating are also slowing and making recovery and rebuilding more difficult.
“There’s been a lot of yelling,” said Chris Blanton, who is leading a volunteer Baptist revival effort in and around Boone this week. “It will probably take years, not months, to get back to normal.”
With extreme weather events expected to become more frequent due to climate change, the challenges posed by Helen in more remote mountain regions are also drawing new attention to long-term mitigation efforts in these regions, Wisconsin says. said Antonia Sebastian, assistant professor at the university. He studies climate and flood risk in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Storms bring new needs
Lindsey Miller pulled up to the drive-thru food kitchen at a church in Boone this week and thanked the volunteers who handed out Styrofoam boxes of hot dogs and green beans.
Miller lives with her autistic son and baby in a hillside house near Todd, north of Boone. The storm washed away her gravel driveway, damaged roads and downed power lines.
She can still get a job at fast food, but her power, cell phone and water were cut off on Tuesday. Nearby residents carried buckets of river water to flush the toilets. Neighbors shared food and supplies.
My mother, who lives next door, does not have insurance. She said the storm is a wake-up call to be better prepared. “I said to my mom, ‘I need some kind of insurance.’
Watauga County Emergency Services Director William Holt said Tuesday that the county received more than 2,000 911 calls on the first day of the storm. Two people were said to have died in the landslide. Dozens remained in the university’s custody, and many more stayed with family and friends. Many hotels rented rooms only to local residents and storm recovery workers.
Help is pouring into the city from volunteer groups, water rescue teams, the National Guard, power companies, tree companies, the Red Cross and more. Officials said they are working to create more locations for water, hot meals, showers, restrooms and cell phone charging stations.
He said the storm was the county’s “worst natural disaster in modern history.”
Holt said in an interview that reconstruction would be complicated by topography and housing patterns, with homes often scattered along rushing streams.
“And it’s not a quick fix,” he said.
As Boone excavates, remote areas prepare for long road to recovery
In Boone, restaurant staff were cleaning mud from floors and parking lots Tuesday. In one district, mud covered streets of flooded homes where volunteers were helping families. About 200 structures have been deemed unsafe, officials said.
Holt said the storm’s effects could hurt the region’s economy, impacting everyone from small business owners to those dependent on tourism. Authorities are currently asking tourists not to come as restoration work progresses.
Further out of town, people ransacked homes and left mattresses and belongings on the side of the road. Some residents and crews worked to temporarily repair washed-out sections of the road along Meatcamp Creek to make it passable.
Roy Dobbins Jr., a Boone Baptist pastor who lives out of town, said this is having a negative impact on some people’s mental health. And it’s creating long-term hardship for people who face power outages and wait weeks for repairs.
“All the bridges and roads are blown up and you can’t get there. A five-minute drive takes an hour,” he said.
Once everyone is reached and immediate recovery needs are met, long-term mitigation efforts are needed in the mountains, Sebastian said. He said the state is at a good starting point given its experience with coastal hurricanes, but the challenges in remote mountain areas are not easy to answer.
From installing infrastructure such as plumbing and drainage systems to strengthening economic and health protection for vulnerable populations, taking steps to protect populations from disasters is expensive and faces many challenges. experts said.
Clifford was sitting on his balcony, sipping tea mixed with orange juice, at the Meat Camp community, which is thought to have been named after hunters who used to dress their animals there. Across the garden, chickens were kept for the grandchildren. Nearby were tree branches that had been used to support downed power lines, which stretched across the yard.
At 80 years old, Clifford still mows a few lawns. When he says he sometimes has trouble getting it done, Carolyn interjects. “You’re doing well,” she told him, insisting that he could still do the job better than a 30-year-old.
Even if Clifford could afford to leave home, unlike his wife, he doesn’t want to. Even if he had known how bad the storm would be, he said, he probably would have preferred to stay in a place surrounded by scenic mountains. The day after the storm, he went to church by a broken road, his wife noted.
But she worries that another similar storm could destroy the hillside or cut it off again. “Just like you need to go to the doctor, you can’t do that,” she says. “I can’t contact anyone.”
Mr Holt said Helen’s death could lead many to have difficult discussions in the coming months about whether people should leave areas they might consider too risky. He says there is no.