A local offers a 2025 update on recovery efforts post Hurricane Helene
Life – in many ways – has returned to normal. Or it is in the process of returning to normal. I’m about a 15-minute drive from the Nolichucky River where serious flooding and damage occurred. So for some of us, it’s possible to go a few days without thinking about the historic damage that struck the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.
But then something happens that brings swift reminders of the devastation and just how far we have left to go. Of course, full recovery isn’t an option. Lives were lost and the course of history changed. Those things can never be recovered or replaced. All that can be done is to do the best we can to return to some level of normalcy. And hope we never face a weather event that extreme again.
IN THIS ARTICLE
About Hurricane Helene’s destruction
Hurricane Helene was not the first time the remnants of a hurricane or tropical storm caused trouble for the region. But I don’t know how many times one of those storms – either arriving from the Atlantic or the Gulf – made it to the mountains as forcefully as Helene did. The preferred term for the storm as it reached the mountains was Tropical Storm Helene. It is hard to refer to the storm that way. It feels a bit confusing, but I think that’s the technically accurate reference.
Helene arrived on the heels of a potent rainstorm that already saturated the area. When Helene arrived dumping up to and over 20 inches of rain in some parts of North Carolina – the waterways became raging torrents of angry, deadly water. As a result, the watershed reshaped the riverbeds and streambeds along the way.
The Tennessee Valley Authority called it a once-in-5,000-year rain event. Both the Lake Lure Dam in North Carolina and the Nolichucky Dam in East Tennessee were thought to be in imminent danger of failing though both eventually held.
Amid untold death and destruction, the North Carolina Department of Transportation issued an announcement that still boggles my mind. All roads in Western North Carolina were closed. That is a massive area for such an announcement.
The destruction in numbers
In the days after the storm, we learned that more than 100 people died from the storm in North Carolina alone. The structural damage totaled nearly $60 billion. Main interstates 40 and 26 were damaged and closed and bridges and roads were lost on both sides of the mountains. On the Tennessee side, the damage was more than $1. 3 billion and 18 lives were lost.
There’s no way to type words on a page or screen to convey the devastation wrought upon the region in late September. Pictures don’t really do it justice. You have to stand there and look at the spot where the water – and the debris it was carrying – tore a massive bridge of concrete and steel up from its roots and washed it miles away. A highway that I’ve traveled hundreds of times was washed away like a sandcastle built too close to the tide. The word I keep coming back to time and again is incomprehensible. It is beyond understanding.
The ongoing recovery efforts
In the days and weeks following the storm, massive efforts from around the country offered help, aid and comfort. However, poor messaging led many to misread requests for patience and prudence as orders not to try to help. Local and state officials from Tennessee and North Carolina praised both government and private responses. The EMA director in Cocke County – for instance – issued a statement saying responses from both private and public entities had gone so far beyond expectations. The response manual was being rewritten on the fly.
And so, people who had been unhoused were housed, often in temporary situations like hotels or shelters. As the months went on, this became something of a political football. Some people claimed FEMA wasn’t doing enough to get temporary residences to people, not doing enough to make sure people were housed as winter set in. Meanwhile, FEMA was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of aid – and preparing Congress to ask for more.
Political officials from presidents to governors to cabinet members visited the mountains to assess the situation firsthand. First, it was the Biden administration and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. After the transition, President Donald Trump and most recently his Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. While Duffy was in Tennessee, members of the state’s congressional delegation urged him to accelerate reimbursements for money the state has spent repairing infrastructure so more can be done.
The interstates and roadways
North Carolina recently announced that I-40 – which had been closed at the Tennessee line – will be reopened with a single lane going each way and a 40-MPH speed limit on March 1. The same week Cocke County officials announced a $700 million grant to replace a bridge lost to the storms.
And in addition to the federal response, private agencies have come to the mountains to lend a hand as well. Houses are being built, and debris cleared while generally getting to some of the more remote places in the mountains.
How you can help
In the days following the storm, the response from everywhere was so massive that it was overwhelming. In Cocke County, they went quickly from carefully handing out bottled water to just leaving pallets of the stuff out so whoever needed some could take it. Clothes, supplies, water and food all of those things came pouring in. Donations are certainly appreciated. But some communities felt like they were drinking out of a firehose while harder-to-reach communities were still in need.
It seems callous to say but cash remains the best donation. Given to reputable and trustworthy relief organizations, cash allows for direct needs to be addressed. Clothes can be purchased in the right sizes, and supplies that fit the bill can be bought and delivered exactly where they need to go.
You can also volunteer – again with a reputable group or organization. In the weeks after the storm, volunteers were needed to help clear debris and prepare for repair and recovery. You can check with the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster to see where help is needed.
You can also talk to your congressional delegation. Let them know that you support spending federal dollars to help communities recover in the wake of disasters. Tell them that helping people who have been stricken by a cataclysmic event should be done automatically and without political thought or interference.
Finally, you can come visit and spend your vacation dollars in the region. Several North Carolina communities are running ad campaigns to let potential visitors that they are open and their tourism revenue is sorely needed.
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