ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) ā Before Hurricane Heleneās landfall last week, the “ŗÉ«Ö±²„ Weather Service began an all-out blitz to alert emergency planners, first responders and residents across the Southeast that the stormās heavy rains and high winds could bring disaster hundreds of miles from the coast.
Warnings blared phrases such as āURGENT,ā ālife threateningā and ācatastrophicā describing the impending perils as far inland as the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Smartphones buzzed with repeated push alerts of flash floods and dangerous winds. States of emergency were declared from Florida to Virginia. And the weather service reached back to 1916 for a precedent, correctly predicting Helene would rank among the āmost significant weather eventsā the Asheville, North Carolina, area had ever seen.
But the red flags and cataclysmic forecasts werenāt enough to prevent the still-rising . The number has soared to at least 215 across six states. At least 72 of those were in hard-hit Asheville and surrounding Buncombe County from flash floods, mudslides, falling trees, crumbled roads and other calamities.
āDespite the dire, dire predictions, the impacts were probably even worse than we expected,ā said Steve Wilkinson, the meteorologist in charge of the “ŗÉ«Ö±²„ Weather Serviceās regional office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina.
āWe reserve this strong language for only the worst situations,ā he said. āBut itās hard to go out and tell people this is going to totally change the landscape of western North Carolina.ā
As the region begins its long road to recovery, a task complicated by cut-off communities, a lack of running water and still-spotty cellphone service, the growing number of casualties has prompted soul-searching among devastated homeowners and officials alike about whether more could have been done to sound the alarms and respond in a mountainous region thatās not often in the path of hurricanes.
āIt sounds stupid to say this, but I didnāt realize it would be like bombs going off,ā Brenton Murrell said after surveying his Asheville neighborhood strewn with mud and debris, military Osprey aircraft whirring overhead. āItās like a war zone.ā
Like many residents interviewed by The Associated Press, Murrell had never experienced the effects of a hurricane and felt detached from the danger despite receiving numerous warnings of āextreme risk of loss of life and property.ā
Murrell said those words never really scared him, in part because his neighbors had been talking for days about the last big flood two decades ago and offered mostly reassuring words that āif youāre not in a low-lying area, youāll be fine.ā
āThere was some sort of disconnect,ā said Murrell, who now regrets riding out the storm at home with his wife, two children and dog, even though they are all safe. āItās human nature to not truly comprehend something until youāve felt it yourself.ā
Many residents said they had not grasped the magnitude of the storm until it was too late. For some, evacuating became impossible as fallen trees and surging floodwaters made roads and bridges impassable. The cascade of emergencies caught seemingly everyone off guard.
Sara Lavery, of Canton, said she received multiple alerts last Thursday before the worst of the storm had hit and was alarmed at how quickly āflood watchesā on her phone progressed to āflood warnings.ā Then she looked out at the Pigeon River near her home and got really scared.
āWe saw a tree the size of telephone pole, a kitchen sink, a bedroom dresser,ā she said. āIt was terrifying.ā
Still, she and her fiance decided to stay, partly because their home was on high ground, partly to leave the roads empty for others and help out endangered residents in lower areas.
āSome people donāt have a place to go, some donāt have a four-wheel vehicle to get out,ā Lavery said. āPeople always say, āWhy didnāt you evacuate?ā Not everyone can.ā
āWe never thought this would happen,ā she said. āWestern North Carolina is the mountains.ā
As the storm swept through, Mia Taylor, of nearby Hendersonville, said she received alerts on her phone about the threat of floods ābut some of us were kind of just like, āOh, itās not that serious.āā
She tried to drive to a nearby town to shelter with her grown children but found āevery which way was blocked off.ā She ended up turning around only for her car to shut off in the rising waters.
āYou didnāt think that it was going to be this bad,ā she said.
Lillian Govus, a Buncombe County spokesperson, said that has been a familiar refrain since the storm because no one alive in the area had seen anything approaching Heleneās destruction. She described the stormās pre-dawn arrival last Friday as āinsidious,ā noting some residents were in bed and may not have heard the emergency alerts.
āFolks were trying to evacuate, but there was nowhere to go,ā she said. āIf thereās a landslide, it doesnāt matter how high you go.ā
Wilkinson, the meteorologist, said forecasters knew many days before the storm that Helene would be catastrophic for western North Carolina and began notifying the emergency management community in briefings and presentations, focusing primarily on flooding and secondarily on wind. Surrounding mountain towns like Asheville, a city of some 95,000, were of particular concern because the communities were built in valleys.
An AP analysis of social media postings and cellphone alerts found more than a dozen were sent by Buncombe County and the “ŗÉ«Ö±²„ Weather Service on Wednesday and Thursday alone. And the language used to convey the threat from Helene ā āextremely rare event,ā āprepare for a life-threatening storm,ā āAct Now!ā ā became increasingly dire as authorities urged people to seek higher ground and evacuate in some cases. The most alarming ones said the destruction could be the worst in a century, referencing the āGreat Flood of 1916ā in which 80 people were killed.
In one of its repeated postings on the social platform X, Wilkinsonās staff pleaded with residents to take its warnings āvery seriouslyā and have multiple means of receiving alerts.
āWe made an attempt based on previous events, to hit our warnings well ahead of time,ā Wilkinson told the AP, āso the alerts went out before the high wind hit. They kind of kept coming.ā
The weather serviceās rainfall and wind speed predictions largely held up, Wilkinson said, with some areas receiving more than 1 foot (0.3 meters) of rain. Mount Mitchell State Park recorded wind gusts at 106 mph (171 kph). The French Broad River Basin saw rivers topping their highest-ever crests by several feet, the weather service reported, adding Helene brought ālikely the most severe flooding in recorded history across Buncombe County.ā Trees and powerlines were downed while hundreds of homes and businesses were flooded. Large stretches of highways were submerged, and some roads and bridges were completely wiped out.
āThe last time a storm like this hit was in the Book of Genesis when Noah had to build an ark,ā said Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton, North Carolina.
Wilkinson said it might be impossible to know the number of people who didnāt heed the warnings or didnāt get them. Cellphone service is sometimes spotty in the mountainous region and may have gotten worse as the storm rolled in.
āI honestly believe we did everything we could have done,ā he said. āItās sad that we couldnāt do more, but weāre trying to recognize that what we did made some difference.ā
In the aftermath of the storm, Wilkinsonās office posted an on X thanking first responders and calling Helene āthe worst event in our officeās history.ā
āAs meteorologists we always want to get the forecast right,ā it said. āThis is one we wanted to get wrong.ā
___
Mustian and Condon reported from New York. Brittany Peterson in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and Christopher Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed reporting.
