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Helene’s devastation, plus politics — 36 Comments

  1. My friend in Asheville, NC says that they had 3 days of sustained rain and moderately higher winds. She said that a big factor was how saturated the ground was and how high the rivers were, before this storm came in.

    She’s in west Asheville and has her cell phone comms back working and expects to get power tomorrow. Water service is out and may not be back for some time. When I visited her in the winter, uncommonly cold weather caused some frozen and burst pipes, and she almost had a water outage then. Not a good water infrastructure, it would seem.

  2. I saw a ton of videos posted on Facebook and there was alway some idiot who asked “Why didn’t they evacuate?” As I said to my sister, “Who in the Blue Ridge Mountains thought, ‘A hurricane is going to hit Florida; I’d better evacuate.'”

  3. It’s not surprising that a hurricane would devastate areas that rarely experience hurricanes, of course they wouldn’t be as prepared as Florida or other places where hurricanes are much more frequent.

    Living where I do we have volcano, earthquake, and tsunami preparedness, I doubt there’s much of that kind of preparedness in western North Carolina or Tennessee, though maybe there’s some for earthquakes since the Virginia quake in 2011. (There was a 4.8 in New Jersey this year that caused a little damage and disruption and made national news, but there was a bigger one in Oregon three days ago.) We don’t have hurricane preparedness here of any sort.

    Sometimes Nature just gets too big for us, and things happen that it would never have made sense to plan for. Not much point in assigning blame, proper focus is to help people get back up and running again.

  4. TommyJay: ditto on the water situation. Finally heard from my cousin in Asheville. They’re OK. The city is not. Water mains are broken all over the city but the damage is so extensive that they can’t tell where all the breaks are. It’s as if the place got bombed. It will be weeks if not months before basic services are restored. Bringing the city back will probably take years, if it can be done at all.

  5. The Blue Ridge had 36 hours notice that this storm was coming. Forecasting was remarkably accurate on this one, from landfall in the Big Bend of Florida through Georgia and South Carolina and up to western NC, complete with rainfall forecasts which were accurate. My friends filled up their cars and bought supplies and tested the generator.

    I don’t see Gov. Cooper out giving detailed press conferences on this. Nor were disaster supplies in sufficient quantity placed in advance in the areas forecast to be the worst hit. Leadership matters. In Katrina, for instance, New Orleans suffered greatly, whereas Mississippi, which took the actual landfall, had fewer casualties and a faster recovery.

    I appreciate the National Guard people up there and what they’re doing. It’s the statewide leadership and national leadership which seem lacking.

    A storm like this is not unprecedented. We moved out of Hickory, NC, in the foothills east of Asheville, about 40 years ago. Within a few years, when Hurricane Hugo hit Charleston, SC, it went up through western NC. Our former neighbors lost power for nearly three weeks.

  6. Cooper, the Democrats Governor, might just revive the campaign of the black Republican, porn site and all.

  7. On a weather page (spaghettimodels.com) someone posted this comment from a lineman friend there. If true, it’s beyond belief.

    “Went up old fort rd to where it connects to 9. Whole area is gone. 100 ft ravine where houses used to be. Kids walking around naked asking where their parents are. People begging for water. Blackhawk helicopters from FEMA. I don’t wanna talk about the smell of dead bodies. I’m in disbelief.

  8. Now, if you want to donate to any disaster relief, you have to be very careful. A lot of mean people out there trying to take your money. Some blog I read mentioned Samaritan’s Purse.

  9. “…plus politics”
    What happens when the ruling junta MUST go after its internal opponents at the cost of everything else….

    “THE HIGH COST OF CRONY CAPITALISM”—
    https://instapundit.com/675173/
    Key graf:

    North Carolina would have 19,522 working
    @Starlink
    kits available today after Hurricane Helene had the FCC not revoked in bad faith the grant that was awarded to SpaceX as the winning bidder.

  10. It never would have happened if we weren’t all driving the wrong cars and too frequently and raised so much cattle.

    /s

  11. The areas are devastated. People displaced will never return. Those that rebuild may take years to do so. Imagine having your home destroyed, then trying to find a place to live. Thousands of peoples lives are ruined.

    The 2018 Campfire in California destroyed the town of Paradise and outlying areas. People are still rebuilding, and being hampered by govt regulations.

    It will never be the same.

  12. When I was in high school, late ’60s early 70s, a major hurricane came up through the piedmont and Appalacians causing flooding, death, and destruction. It did not destroy Washington D.C. These things happen from time to time, but 30 inches of rain in 3 days, that is extraordinarily powerful.

  13. Gov. Cooper is up there now, giving a press conference with various agency leaders. The FEMA spokeswoman was careful to say that “President Biden and Vice President Harris” have authorized continued support for the region. This conference is being given on the nice safe tarmac of the Asheville airport, in Fletcher, south of Asheville proper.

    Per the National Guard commander, military cargo planes are being used to bring relief materials into the airport.

  14. I have a free app that shows air traffic. And it shows all air traffic. And there has been REMARKABLY little air traffic in the area of the devastation since this. I had expected to see NUMEROUS helicopters. I have seen one. (For example, during the Park Fire in California, I saw TONS of helicopter action at any time of the day.)

  15. A childhood friend, just recently widowed and in her 70s, lives in Western NC in a flowery, quirky, lovely but isolated little house on a back road that winds along a steep mountain creek. Nobody’s heard from her directly since the storm, but her sister says her name has been found on a “marked safe” list and a neighbor reports that she’s okay for now. She’s healthy and resilient. But there wasn’t cell service on her mountain even before the storm, and now the wires are gone and so is her road and all the nearby bridges, and so are all the other roads and bridges in her vicinity, and so is the local store and who knows how much else in her community. The only way in and out is by helicopter, and there’s no way to call for help anyway, and it sounds as if it will be like that for a long time.

    I’ve driven through those mountains and all the narrow, winding roads trace their way through narrow, winding ravines — or the right word is hollers, I guess — carved by swift mountain creeks. When the creeks flood, they pretty much have to take the roads with them. I’m waiting to find out from my friend’s sister how best to help from afar, and hoping this won’t mean the loss of her independent life in her well-loved mountain home, so soon after the loss of her husband. She’s just one person among who knows how many, and at least she’s alive. I hope those who can help are paying attention.

  16. Mrs. Whatsit, the National Guard is still working hard at rescue efforts. I hope they will find your friend soon.

  17. This is different from Harvey, which hit on flat land. Here, a foot of rain becomes twenty feet in a creek bed.
    A cubic yard of water weighs almost three quarters of a ton and when it gets loose, heady down hill at, say, fifteen miles an hour, surrounded by a couple of cubic miles of water pushing it along, the effect is unbelievable.

  18. One almost definite, positive thing that will come of all the strife in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida… there will be untold numbers of people volunteering to help. There are so many good people in the world. Distant churches will raise money. Nearer churches, youth groups, individuals… will come by bus and car with supplies and to work, and help. There are already reports of private helicopter pilots volunteering their skill, time, machines and fuel to help.

  19. Rufus
    My sister and brother-in-law were flooded out by Harvey. They had lots of help from various volunteers; church youth groups, so forth. Mucking out a house is a miserable job but the kids kept at it cheerfully.

  20. Aeons ago I lived for two years in Polk County, the smallest county in NC, beloved by retirees, which is in the low hills south of Asheville.

    Asheville turned into a booming, artsy town, population 100,000, from a nothingville over the past ~40 years, but it is nothing now, no longer a ville. Obliterated. Biltmore Forest, just S of Asheville, was an area of very pricey homes, all surely flooded.
    https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2024/09/28/asheville-flooding-see-aerial-footage-of-biltmore-village/75433504007/
    Spots in hilly, mountainous western NC received as much as 24 inches of rain, but the average was 12-14 inches, overnight. Biltmore Estate, a 35 bedroom stone palace, was built for the Vanderbilts by Italian masons, I believe. I wonder how it is today.

    Most do not know that American forestry as a discipline began on Vanderbilt land about 150 years ago, by foresters imported from Germany, where the profession was born.

    Rufus: the roads around and to Asheville are all washed out. Only way in is helicopter. Your many good people cannot get there.

  21. Joe,

    There’s generally a reluctance to use Regulars in this role. First should come the Guard. But, yeah, given sufficient need, those guys can thread needles with their birds and the ground crews can load stuff really fast.

    I guess we’ll see if the white Christians get any DC attention….

  22. There’s Regular Army, there’s the Guard, and then there’s rednecks:

    https://x.com/ryanhallyall/status/1840842329986388063

    Little concerned about the 501(c)(3)-ification of redneck culture (a “United Cajun Navy” website?). Eric Hoffer’s aphorism about great causes turning into rackets comes to mind. Still, if they’re delivering, good on them.

  23. Hubert, I watch Ryan Hall’s videos at least once a week. He is talented. Clever of him to figure out that national weather reporting can be a full time, individual job, rather than a few, 2 minute spots on local weather a day.

    Seems like a good guy. His storm chasing crews do a lot of good work for people impacted by weather.

    A great example of how modern technology allows motivated, enterprising individuals to do better reporting and work than international news syndicates.

  24. Rufus: thanks for the info. First time I’d heard of or seen the Y’All Squad. Good to hear that they’re legit.

    Just heard from my cousin. He and his wife were able to get out of Asheville yesterday. They drove all night to Connecticut, where they have a place to stay. He figures they’ll be there for at least a month. He said that news reports can’t convey how bad it is in Asheville and the surrounding area. On the plus side, he said that military operation-level support is starting to arrive at the airport. One of the aid workers told him that they’ve worked all over the world but they’ve never seen this type of devastation.

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