Swannanoa, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 4th Oct, 2024) When Hurricane Helene roared over the mountains before dawn last week, it brought a maelstrom of water that rose to the mailbox of Shelby Holzhauser’s little white house on the banks of the Swannanoa River.
To get food and water, for days she’s had to don a backpack and trudge past mounds of debris left by the killer storm as it destroyed everything in its path.
“There’s no power, no water,” Holzhauser said as her four-year-old son Carter clung to her legs.
Under sunny skies on Thursday, crews in the town of Swannanoa and all over in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina were fixing roads, pipes and electricity lines destroyed by the hurricane.
The death toll stood at more than 200 throughout several southeast states. North Carolina was the hardest hit, recording half of the fatalities.
“Us living on a hill, we thought we were going to be okay. But it got really close enough to where I had to get my son out of the house, and I was scared that we were going to get stuck,” the 23-year-old preschool teacher said.
Nearly a week after the storm hit, and the hulks of ruined cars and other detritus have been cleared from the main roads. But life was far from normal.
To flush the toilet, Holzhauser has to use water from the river. As she spoke to AFP, her husband fired up a generator that his employer lent them so they can cook.
Elsewhere in town, men staffed a large stand with basic necessities at a shuttered gas station.
“We’re all sticking together. Everybody’s helping each other,” said Holzhauser.
A lifetime resident of this mountain region, Holzhauser said life before Helene meant working all the time to earn money and get by, and she never really bonded with her neighbors.
But that has changed.
“I guess ever since the disaster happened, I was actually able to get close with my neighbors. They came down to check on us, make sure we had what we needed,” she said.
Harrowing tales are everywhere and a neighbor named Vincent Floriani is no different. He stood outside a house he rents out, the floor of which was covered in six inches (15 centimeters) of muck.
As floodwaters nearly reached the ceiling of the house on the day of the storm, Floriani’s tenant wriggled his way out and swam until someone saved him in a kayak.
Floriani could not find him for days and feared the worst, until the man called Wednesday from a hospital.
“It was the happiest phone call I ever had,” he told AFP, his house now sporting an ugly brown line marking the water’s height — at least seven feet (more than two meters).
“It is just utter devastation,” said Floriani. “These houses have been here for 100 years, and there’s never been a flood like this.”
