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First destruction, now dire conditions across Appalachia after Helene

Elowenn in the mud in Marshall, NC
Photo by Gerard Albert III
Elowenn in the mud in Marshall, NC

The amount of rainfall from Helene in Appalachian mountain communities - an estimated 40 trillion tons - was previously incomprehensible, despite the region’s history of landslides and flooding.

Declared a major disaster in six states, the regional impact of Helene has been severe and widespread. A majority of those who died in the hurricane-turned-tropical storm, according to official reports as of Friday, were in Western North Carolina.

Beyond North Carolina’s borders, entire communities in the mountains of east Tennessee were submerged. In Unicoi County, 60 patients and medical staff were rescued from the top of a flooding hospital. Eleven workers at a plastics factory in Erwin, Tenn., were swept away by floodwaters after their employers reportedly refused to let them leave work until it was too late.

Meanwhile, in low-income communities of southwestern Virginia, Helene claimed two lives, and power and water service have been widely interrupted, with boil-water notices active in multiple counties. Virginia’s George Washington and Jefferson national forests are closed indefinitely. In east Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, many communities had relied on the outdoor recreation and tourism economy as local mining and manufacturing dwindled. Now even that is gone.

The majority of Duke’s power outages are in South Carolina, nearly half a million as of mid-week. There, too, landslides and flooding resulted in dozens of fatalities, and road washouts have cut rural communities off from the world for days.

“I will just reiterate that like, this is not going to be the last time this happens,” said Chelsea Barnes, an organizer with regional environmental justice advocacy group Appalachian Voices. “It's going to keep getting worse as long as we keep burning fossil fuels.”

As carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels heats the atmosphere, scientists have said this type of event is becoming much, much more likely. This is the second thousand-year flood to hit the Appalachian region in two years, after the deadly eastern Kentucky flood of 2022.

Barnes said that even as she grapples with this reality, she is trying to internalize lessons from the Kentucky flood in recovery from Helene.

“It's not a good thing for a community to have to go through this multiple times, but I think you do see that the places that have gone through things like this before are much better set up to deal with it,” Barnes said, pointing to fundraising and supply drives from elsewhere in the region.

People who’ve been flooded before know that needs rapidly evolve. “Eastern Kentucky folks weren't directly impacted, but they've been helping with the first response to the community needs, and in Virginia and Tennessee, because they're used to it.”

The closure of I-26 and I-40, two major thoroughfares that connect North Carolina to Tennessee, will affect food distribution and shipping for months, and perhaps years, to come, Barnes said.

“Not only have the major interstates been knocked out, but like smaller roads that are the only roads to access communities, entire homes, entire towns, all gone, completely gone,” Barnes said. “If we can ever recover, it will take an extremely long time.”

Katie Myers is BPR's Climate Reporter.