Hurricane Helene: North Carolina residents fight for their survival as basic goods become scarce
Those affected by Hurricane Helene are now more than five days without necessities, including water, gas, power and cellphone service.
"They're afraid. People are getting on edge," retired Asheville, North Carolina, police Officer Steve Antle told Fox News Digital. "They've already had people doing some minor looting in the area. Because there's no power … so it's just a free-for-all at this point. There are no traffic signals. There are not enough police officers."
In Fairview, a suburb of Asheville hit hard by floodwaters and mudslides after the worst of Helene Friday morning, residents can be seen driving around grocery store parking lots asking others where they got water, gasoline and food.
Due to the lack of electricity and cell service, locals are unable to communicate to find out where these necessities are. Communication with loved ones and emergency personnel is also spotty, and residents are relying on temporary cell service towers that have been set up in select locations. But outside those locations, there is still no service or roaming data.
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James LaTrella told Fox News Digital he lost his house in the storm.
"Two giant oak trees fell on our house and took out the whole left side … first floor and the whole left side on the second floor," LaTrell said. "I actually got sick to my stomach while seeing that. I was in shock."
He added later that "the heavens came down" with Helene, unlike anything the region has seen before. Helene has left at least 133 people dead across the Southeast, and that number is expected to rise in the coming weeks as recovery teams continue to locate bodies and attempt to contact victims' families. More than 1,000 people in Buncombe County remain unaccounted for, FOX Weather previously reported.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) arrived in Western North Carolina Monday after Gov. Roy Cooper announced President Biden had approved federal resources, but locals in Fairview maintained that they hadn't seen any federal officials in the area Monday.
"I haven't seen anybody from the federal government other than the Army, which is running the helicopters," Buncombe County. "I've seen lots of out-of-state rescue, lots of county ambulances. I've seen lots of state resources, wildlife resources. … But I haven't seen any federal government. I guess when you have a disaster like this, you imagine the federal government would swoop in, but that hasn't been the case here."
Rhiannon Thomas told Fox News Digital she felt "lucky" to have half a tank of gas and a vial of insulin for her daughter, who has diabetes.
Unopened insulin needs to be refrigerated; without power, the only way to keep it cool is by using bags of ice, which the local Food Lion handed out to anyone who asked for it.
"The magnitude of it is great. We moved from the Bahamas to get away from storms," Thomas said before tearing up. "We’re going to be OK. Everybody’s pulling together."
Thomas noted that getting out of the area has been difficult with major road closures and a scarcity of gas.
Locals have heard rumors that electricity will be restored on main roads by the weekend, but it may take weeks or even months for power to be restored in the mountains.
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At a Shell gas station, a long line of cars for gas for over an hour — before the pumps even turned on. Drivers had been waiting for power to return to the station. When it did, they cheered and made phone calls to the station's owner to ask him to get gas flowing again.
Some grocery stores were closed. At least two in Fairview had been broken into as of Monday. A local Ingles grocery store and Dollar General operated cash only, with employees stationed at the front doors. Employees would retrieve a select amount of items a customer wanted and write down the items' serial numbers on a piece of paper.
There were food donation locations set up, but residents did not know where to find them unless they heard by word of mouth.
Since the worst of the storm on Friday morning, local and state officials, as well as local and out-of-state volunteer rescue organizations — such as Samaritan's Purse headquartered in Boone and Cajun Navy 2016 located in Louisiana — had been working to send personnel and supplies up the steep mountain roads severely damaged by Helene in western North Carolina.
Rescue teams have also been deployed to parts of eastern Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Florida — areas that were also devastated by the storm.
North Carolina locals reported seeing corpses in the water, buried beneath debris and trapped in cars crushed by trees.
John Nazarovitch, a brewer in Fariview, showed Fox News Digital the remnants of a home that had floated downriver during the storm. Large pieces of metal from the house were wrapped around trees, showing just how strong the current had been.
"It flooded the inside of the taproom — about a foot of water in there," Nazarovitch said. "Destroyed our barrel room also, where we do a lot of our aging."
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Peter Larson, who works in a warehouse, isn’t sure he will still have a job in a week after the hurricane’s destruction.
"It’s a disaster," he told Fox News Digital. "Wholesale destruction everywhere. The roads in the mountains are washed out to the point where not even emergency medical can get in."
In Fariview and other nearby towns such as Swannanoa, Black Mountain, Biltmore Forest and Boone, some residents became trapped in their mountainside homes after roads were entirely washed away by floodwaters, with no way to communicate with their loved ones or emergency personnel.
Antle said locals have been voicing concerns to the state and U.S. government about the poor state of roads in the mountainous region, some of which are U.S. roads, for years. Now, those roads have been washed away, the retired officer said.
"It's just a perfect storm," Antle said. "I can't imagine what it's going to ever look like again."
Melina Daniels, who owns a store called Common Good Co. in Boone, told Fox News Digital in a statement that Helene "has been the most catastrophic natural disaster that has taken place" in western North Carolina communities.
"While we are amongst the few that received minimal property damage, our businesses and incomes have come to a halt," Daniels said.
September through November is a peak time for tourism in the Appalachian region. Visitors come to see the foliage, go hiking and camping and stay at luxury resorts and bed-and-breakfasts, some of which no longer exist after the hurricane. Weddings, too, are popular in the area this time of year, but some event locations were destroyed in the storm.
"Many of us still don’t have power, water and service. However, we firmly believe God is using this for good and strengthening our families, communities and hearts to come together and trust Him," Daniels said, adding that Common Good Co. has been baking bread and donating candles, matches and dry food for local families in need, who have been left without "their homes, cars or belongings."
Other towns like Chimney Rock and Lake Lure, where "Dirty Dancing" was filmed, were wiped away by rushing waters.
"There's power lines down everywhere, poles snapped, and they're just all over the place," Charlotte City Councilman Tariq Bokhari, who visited Lake Lure with friends over the weekend to assess the damage, told Fox News Digital. "We didn't see a single power crew there working on restoring power. That's not even a priority right now. I don't know how long that's going to take."
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In the Lake Lure area, Bokhari could see "where the river then had funneled everything into the lake."
"It was incomprehensible, what we witnessed, as it relates to the magnitude it was," he said. "[I]t was truly something that you really can't even visualize unless you see it."
Hundreds of thousands more remain without power and cell service, which has led to delays in locals getting help and trying to get in touch with loved ones affected by the hurricane.
Helene's death toll for North Carolina and Tennessee is unknown as authorities continue to respond and get in touch with families before publicizing official numbers, but the lack of data roaming and cellphone service is making that difficult.
Some towns, such as Weaverville and Morganton, are also without water due to water plants being submerged underwater.
"They've brought in a mobile transmitter tower and put it at the grocery store. … We only have one grocery store in Fairview, and that's kind of where everything's being coordinated," Antle said.
While nearby highways remain relatively clear for traffic, many secondary roads are destroyed, streetlights are not working and traffic into grocery stores and gas stations is overwhelming across several counties around western North Carolina.