Three weeks after Tropical Storm Helene turned quaint creeks and rivers into deadly forces of nature in western North Carolina on Sept. 27, statistics still feel inadequate to describe the depth of its wounds.
State of play: At least 95 people died from Helene in North Carolina, according to figures the state provided to Axios Friday, but a local public radio station using local officials' data puts the number at 125.
- The state says 39 people are still missing, but locals believe it's far more, and are posting about their missing loved ones on Facebook and distributing an unofficial spreadsheet of missing people.
- The state adds that its number of missing "is not a definitive count," because it's dependent on information it receives from various sources, including local governments and nonprofits.
- Nearly 500 roads remain closed. More than 80,000 people have been approved for FEMA's individual assistance aid.
But none of that, locals say, captures the scope of a storm that created disasters in communities stretching more than 100 miles across mountainous terrain from southwestern North Carolina to just north of the Virginia border.
"It's frustration on top of frustration on top of frustration," says Shelly Tygielski, who moved to Asheville from Florida in 2023 to be closer to her in-laws, who've lived here for decades.
- "It's frustration that these numbers are inaccurate, and [you can't] tell us that they are [accurate]. And frustration that we're also 22 days without water. And then the third part of it is … feeling like we've been forgotten, and most people [outside of the area] don't really understand the extent."
- Tygielski, who is cofounder of Partners in Kind , a social impact entertainment equity fund and foundation, says she's received work emails from people in California and other far-off states that begin with greetings like, "I hope your cleanup went well." Her internal reaction is usually something along the lines of, "Have you even heard about what's happening here?"
That feeling of being forgotten in the national news cycle is shared widely by people here.
- Asheville resident Matt Van Swol posted a video of damaged areas Friday with a caption, "This is the park where my kids played. The restaurant where I fell in love. An art studio of a dear friend. It's a video of Asheville to you, but it's home to me."
- "Please don't forget us."
Zoom in: Local outlets have done the painstaking work of trying to collect stories of the horror. The Asheville Citizen-Times this week published a story of two brothers, 9 and 7 , who were swept away in the floodwaters along with their mother. Their bodies weren't found until a week later.
- The two boys were among four Buncombe County Schools students who died. Earlier this week, the county school system said 21 other children remained unaccounted for. On Friday, they updated to say that all 21 had been found alive.
- Still, as the system aims for an Oct. 25 reopening date, leaders know that more than 400 students experienced a "significant impact" from the storm and more than 700 are now experiencing homelessness, the Citizen-Times reports .
Meanwhile, people who still have homes are only beginning to see water pour from their taps. "Thousands" of farm animals are roaming free in the mountains because of damage to fencing, according to a Garden & Gun feature .
All that is chaos enough. But toss in a hyper-partisan election , where the state's Democratic governor and Republican lieutenant governor (who's also running for governor) have openly feuded over whether federal and state responses have been substantial.
- Toss in tension between civilian aircraft operators and military aircraft operators in search and recovery.
- Toss in a recently developing tension between towns that weren't severely damaged calling on tourists to come visit in a vital economic season, and those towns still trying to figure out how to rebuild altogether.
- Toss in that this is already a region full of residents distrustful of the government, who've lived on family land for generations, and who see programs such as FEMA's flood mitigation program , which buys out flooded homes and helps people move to safer areas, as land grabs.
- Toss in the fact that a growing immigrant population lost homes and jobs in the floodwaters, and is unlikely to receive federal aid, as the Washington Post reports .
- And toss in that the mountains host countless transient people — from buskers to homeless people to seasonal migrant workers on Christmas tree farms — who have no addresses, and who may not appear in any official totals.
"All of these issues, one on top of the other," Tygielski said, "created this perfect storm."
And Tygielski would know about storms. She lived in Florida through many of them. The night before Helene hit, she said, she and her husband went out for their anniversary dinner in Asheville — pasta and a bottle of wine they brought from home. When they walked out they ran to their car in the rain without giving it much thought.
- Overnight, the alerts started coming in on their phones at 1am and 4am, but by then it was too late to leave. By the next day, she said, her perspective on hurricanes had changed forever.
- "What I'm seeing here is very different from anything I've ever seen."
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