Asheville, North Carolina (CNN) — No power. No food. And no functioning roads to safely leave the homes in which they are stranded.
These are the conditions some North Carolina residents face amid the worst of the flooding caused by tropical depression Helene.
Jennifer Replogle, a pregnant mother of two young children, is “completely trapped” at her home above Boone in Tater Hill, North Carolina, elevation 4,200 feet, where severe flooding from tropical storms is not the norm.
“We weren’t prepared for this,” she said via text early Saturday morning. “The roads are gone, like completely gone.”
Power has been out since early Friday, she said. She is among 700,000 North Carolina residents without power as of Saturday morning, according to poweroutage.us., including 19,226 in Watauga County, where Tater Hill is located.
Replogle said she has no food and is running out of water.
The few narrow, winding roads from the mountain into Boone are impassable, she said.
“Our basement flooded yesterday. If they don’t get somebody to us soon, I really don’t know what to do,” Replogle said.
She is worried about the plumbing and water services business she and her husband own. They have seen a photo of the business’ flooded parking lot and fear “we have lost most of everything.”
Their employees are also trapped at home or staying with friends, Replogle said.
Watauga County authorities have declared a curfew from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., according to a post on the county’s Emergency Services Facebook page. The post cited “dangerous conditions,” “compromised roads” and “ongoing emergency operations.”
And the town of Boone issued a boil water advisory Friday due to “multiple water breaks,” according to the town’s Facebook page.
Helene first made landfall in Florida Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane, destroying homes and buildings and knocking out power across the Southeast. The storm has left at least 59 people dead across five states.
Helene “is one of the worst storms in modern history for parts of North Carolina,” Gov. Roy Cooper said. More than 2 feet of rain fell in the state’s mountainous region from Wednesday morning to Friday morning, with Busick, a small unincorporated area in Yancey County, along the western border with Tennessee, recording 29.58 inches in just 48 hours.
More than 400 roads remain closed in western North Carolina, the state Department of Transportation said Saturday morning. “All roads in Western NC should be considered closed,” the post on X says.
The storm has exposed other North Carolina residents to life-or-death situations.
Sofia Grace Kunst, an 18-year-old performing a mission trip in Black Mountain, told CNN a landslide shattered through a window and poured into her dining hall on Friday morning.
“It wasn’t just like trickling down… like it had momentum! It was going! Maybe between like five, six feet,” Kunst said of the mud.
Kunst was playing the card game Uno with six of her friends in a small room within the dining hall when the landslide broke through the window.
“You look back and you just see it pouring into the room and you’re like, oh my goodness, I was there two seconds ago,” Kunst told CNN.
She ran into the main room of the dining hall only to see that the wall had completely caved in too.
Kunst and her friends ultimately decided to trek through flood water to get to a parking lot on higher ground, where their vans were located. She was so scared for her life that she sent a text to her parents, she said.
“I did actually send a text saying like, ‘Hey, so this storm is not so fun anymore. I love you,’” Kunst said. “Obviously you can’t regret anything if you’re dead, but I would regret it if I didn’t say anything.”
Eventually, Kunst and her friends were able to cross through a body of water, holding onto a rope as they crossed from one end to the other. Kunst was still barefoot at this time.
‘Pure chaos’
Asheville resident Matt Lewis described the “pure chaos” left in the aftermath of the storm.
He saw a semi-truck floating down the French Broad River Friday, he told CNN, which he described as “pretty wild.”
Lewis said he doesn’t have any power or cell service. He is relying on radio as the only source for updates on the devastation.
He said he saw about 400 people in line when he went to the grocery store.
“They were letting them in, I think, probably 15 to 20 people at a time,” Lewis said.
Another North Carolina resident, Patrick McNamara, the owner of a small milk distribution business in Asheville, told CNN his business was torn apart by flood waters when the storm struck.
As the day broke Saturday, McNamara was able to take a first look at the destruction left in Helene’s wake. “The floodwaters were four feet above the dock,” McNamara told CNN. “So the entire building has been wiped out.”
The facility’s machinery was strewn across the warehouse, milk spoiled, and inches of mud pilled all over the floor. He estimates he will have to get rid of thousands of milk gallons. “Here’s our cooler, that is what’s left of the inventory that’s not in the middle of the road out there,” McNamara said as he walked through the warehouse.
He says his biggest problem is cleaning up the mud that flooded into the warehouse. “That was two or three inches solid,” he said, taking a shovel and beginning to push mud across the floor. “You know, it’s not an easy cleanup job.”
Floodwaters broke over the five-foot-tall loading dock and flooded the building with an estimated four feet of water, according to McNamara. It is unknown when resources like water and electricity will come online again. McNamara said they may have to consider temporarily relocating the business to another facility.
“We’re seeking some places in Asheville. We’re gonna stay right here, but it’s a tough and unique business,” said McNamara. “So not everybody has the facilities that will accommodate what we’re looking for.”
Over the weekend, totals of up to 1 inch of rain are expected for some parts of western North Carolina, including Asheville. The governor said Saturday morning that “significant danger from this storm still exists” in a post on X.
In McDowell County, which neighbors Yancey, over 20 air rescues have been conducted since early Saturday morning, according to local authorities.
McDowell County’s emergency center is being inundated with calls every hour, many of them involving patients who are “entrapped with severe trauma, running out of oxygen or essential medical supplies,” the agency said.
“In many areas, responders are unable to reach those in need due to massive landslides, downed trees, power lines, and severely flooded roads,” the agency added.
A state report says hundreds of frail elderly nursing home residents were stacked side by side, head to toe in a small church with no working air conditioning or refrigerator during Hurricane Helene.
