ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Isolated and without electricity or phone service since Hurricane Helene inflicted devastation across the Southeast nearly a week ago, residents in the mountains of western North Carolina are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping.
At the town square in Black Mountain, local leaders stood atop a picnic table shouting updates about when power might be restored. One woman took notes to pass along to her neighbors. Alongside a fencerow, a makeshift message board listed the names of people still missing. In other areas, mules delivered medical supplies to mountaintop homes. Residents collected water from creeks and cooked over camp stoves. And across the region, people were looking after each other.
President Joe Biden, after surveying the area by helicopter on Wednesday, praised the Democratic governor of North Carolina and the Republican governor of South Carolina for their responses to the storm, saying that in the wake of disasters, “we put politics aside.”
While government cargo planes brought food and water into the hardest-hit areas and rescue crews waded through creeks searching for survivors, those who made it through the storm, whose death toll has topped 180, leaned on one another — not technology.
“I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t know what was going to happen next. But I got out and I’m alive,” said Robin Wynn, who lost power at her Asheville home early Friday and was able to grab a bag of canned goods and water before getting to a shelter despite water up to her knees.
Now that she’s back home, she said her neighbors have been watching out for one another. Plenty of people have come around to make sure everyone has a hot meal and water.
Helping one another in the hardest-hit areas
In remote mountain areas, helicopters hoisted the stranded to safety while search crews moved toppled trees so they could look door to door for survivors. In some places, homes teetered on hillsides and washed-out riverbanks.
Nearly a week after the storm, more than 1.1 million customers still had no power in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene struck after barreling over Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane. Deaths have been reported in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, in addition to the Carolinas.
Sarah Vekasi is a potter who runs a store in Black Mountain called Sarah Sunshine Pottery, named after her normally…