The death toll from catastrophic flooding in the Asheville area of ​​western North Carolina more than tripled to 35 on Monday — as survivors in remote mountain towns described seeing victims’ bodies stuck in trees.

Nationwide, 120 people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, which has cut a path of death and destruction through the Southeast since making landfall last Thursday.

The rain devastated the mountains of Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, and washed away entire communities in floods and mudslides. Roads were buried or washed away, cutting off victims from rescue crews.

“There were bodies in trees. They found bodies under the rubble,” said Alyssa Hudson, whose home in Black Mountain — a town of 8,400 residents about 12 miles from Asheville — was all but washed away.

Hudson’s neighborhood was evacuated, but she saw videos posted by strangers on social media of her home submerged to the roof.

“We started seeing videos of our house on Facebook,” Hudson said. “Our floors have collapsed, our walls are gone. We had a shed in our backyard that they found two miles away.”

Hudson and her boyfriend managed to escape before the worst of the flooding, but her friends and neighbors trapped in the city told harrowing stories of bodies floating in ditches and residents fighting for their lives against the rising tide.

Hudson’s boss Corbin Weeks, with whom she coaches softball at a local college, helped get a family out of a trailer just before it disappeared under a river of brown sludge.

“It’s like a hell we can’t wake up from,” Weeks said.

Kimberly and Jimmie Stone were cut off from their daughter at the local Montreat College, where about a thousand students were stuck without power and little cell phone service.

When the couple attempted to drive into Black Mountain from Asheville, they encountered a scene of almost indescribable devastation.

“There were fallen trees, downed power lines, collapsed structures, overturned cars and destroyed train tracks all along the road. Buildings collapsed onto the road,” Kimberly Scott said.

The Scotts eventually managed to save their daughter, but other students were stranded on campus for days, surviving on cafeteria food cooked on gas stoves.

A preliminary estimate puts the total damage from Hurricane Helene at $34 billion, Fox Business reports.

As for Hudson and her boyfriend, their renters insurance doesn’t cover natural disasters, and they will come out the other side of the disaster with almost nothing left. “Almost literally everything we own is gone. … My friend lost all the equipment for his business. Our furniture, electronics, family photos and records, birth certificates – completely gone.”