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    • When will relief and recovery begin for Western NC?
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    When will relief and recovery begin for Western NC?

    Vaseline Posted on

    Neighbors grabbed chainsaws.

    They jumped into pickup trucks and slogged through the muddy water.

    They collected rubble, prepared as much food as possible and searched for missing friends and neighbors.

    As the waters begin to recede Monday, hope is beginning to appear on the devastated landscape around Asheville. Communities came together during the most difficult of times.

    However, recovery from Tropical Storm Helene could take weeks or months. The storm stretched more than 600 miles from Florida to North Carolina and Tennessee, causing destruction since Friday. More than a hundred deaths have occurred in six states as a result of the Category 4 storm.

    The death toll in Western North Carolina has steadily risen; the latest report was 35 deaths in Buncombe and six deaths in Henderson and one in Macon counties, with even higher numbers expected.

    Some power will be returned to the homes of more than a million residents who have lost it. Some roads are reopening along the edges of the hardest-hit places. Some flights have returned to Asheville Regional Airport.

    Global aid organization World Central Kitchen will distribute free meals to the public at Bear’s Smokehouse, 135 Coxe Ave., beginning September 30 at noon. downtown, in the South Slope district, according to a local food organization, Food Connection.

    WCK will later establish additional distribution locations outside of Asheville.

    Hearts with Hands will continue outreach by distributing food boxes and water at the Outreach Ministry’s Outreach Warehouse, 850 Warren Wilson Road in Swannanoa, until September 30 at 6 p.m. The organization plans to add hot meal distribution later.

    Asheville City Schools will be closed at least all week.

    Get updates as soon as we get them: Sign up for text message updates and crucial information about the aftermath of Hurricane Helene

    At a housing project in Asheville, 56-year-old Pisgah View resident Deborah Kincaid struggled to speak as she told the Citizen Times that without drinking water, she is unable to clean the nebulizer and tracheostomy tube in her trachea, causing the air can reach her lungs. . Kincaid said she has been using the nebulizer for two years to clear mucus from her throat after having her larynx removed following a bout of throat cancer. She only has a few small plastic bottles of water left.

    Kincaid couldn’t even use her nebulizer until neighbors in a nearby unit ran an extension cord from their apartment to her unit so she could plug it in. With nearly 100,000 people without power in Buncombe County as of 12:30 p.m. September 29, some buildings in the housing complex still had it.

    “We just need water,” resident Julie Brown told the Citizen Times on September 29. “You have units where four children use the bathroom.”

    Unable to flush, “those are germs, those are bacteria,” Brown said.

    As of Sunday, more than 3,300 federal employees had been deployed to support response efforts in affected states.

    In the town of Red Hill, NC, landslides have wiped out entire mountainsides.

    James Waters watched as Helene’s torrential rains and fierce winds devastated his farm among the hilly slopes of Appalachian North Carolina, destroying trees, tearing away fences and causing a landslide.

    “The whole side of the mountain came down,” he said. “Then it filled the valley with mud.”

    It took him a whole day to dig for the main road with an agricultural excavator. He found windy roads littered with downed power lines, fallen limbs, thick mud and debris. In some places, cars were washed into ditches. A neighbor found a body near a riverbank, he said.

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving generators and additional power generation equipment to the hardest-hit areas of North and South Carolina as floodwaters recede and debris can be removed.

    FEMA is transporting dozens of trailers of food and water in North Carolina to support the state in setting up care and distribution sites.

    FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell is expected to survey Helene’s damage in North Carolina on Monday, according to a new release updating the Biden-Harris administration’s response efforts.

    On Sunday evening, Criswell and Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall briefed President Joe Biden on the ongoing impacts of Tropical Storm Helene in multiple states, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia. Marshall, located along the French Broad River north of Asheville, was hit by a deluge that reached the roof of some downtown buildings. A water treatment plant across the river was also damaged. The damage also extended to several businesses that have become part of an artistic renewal downtown in recent years. One owner said they have plans to rebuild. As excavators and equipment buzzed around him, Chad Adamowski and his friends were shoveling mud from his tattoo and music shop, hoping to rip out walls before mold developed. “It’s a race against time,” he said.

    Vaseline
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