Helene Recovery & Info

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altmin said:
www.nytimes.com

For Hours, He Clung to a Tree and Cried for Help. But None Came.

Bruce Tipton, 75, was in his trailer home when it was washed away by Tropical Storm Helene’s floodwaters. As his agonized family watched, he slipped into the raging river.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Some longtime Rollins Road residents who initially dismissed the warnings to leave the area last week ended up fleeing as the storm approached. But Mr. Tipton, whose trailer house had weathered previous storms, apparently did not change his mind. On Friday, the river continued its advance, making an island of his low-lying plot of land.

Jason Blankenship said that when firefighters came through the neighborhood that morning, he urged them to help evacuate Mr. Tipton, who was standing in his doorway. He said a firefighter told him that Mr. Tipton had already refused their aid on Thursday night.

As the water continued to swirl Friday afternoon, Mr. Tipton remained in his doorway, waving to his family up on the railroad tracks. Then, all of a sudden, his doorway — and the rest of his home — disappeared into the water, leaving behind only a few pieces of foundation.

“One minute he’s standing in the front door, and the next minute, the trailer’s gone,” said one of his nieces, Annie Meadows, who watched the horror unfold. “It kind of exploded.”

Watching from the tracks, his family all feared for nearly an hour that he was lost. Then came a shout from behind a tree in the water: “Help!”

It felt like a miracle at first, Ms. Meadows said, but it was soon apparent how bleak the situation was.


The houses on the riverbank were flooding, and there seemed to be no way to get to Mr. Tipton. Though Ms. Meadows’s fiancé, Cody Rice, cannot swim, he tied a cable around his waist and got up on the roof of a nearby house to see if he could reach Mr. Tipton. The cable was too short.

From the tree, Mr. Tipton continued for hours to plead for help. Trying to encourage him to keep going, relatives called out that they had rescued his dog and asked him if he could see them. He said he could.

As dusk neared, a group of firefighters arrived, including the county’s only river rescue team. But they said that the water was too dangerous to enter, and that they would return at daybreak. Family members expressed shock.

“When they told me they wouldn’t put boats in the water, I lost it,” Ms. Meadows said.

Mitch Hampton, an assistant chief of the Walnut Volunteer Fire Department and the leader of its river rescue team, said that the water was too turbulent for his squad, which does not have the powerful equipment that teams in larger regions do. All of the team’s rescue boats are inflatable, and none has a motor.

“The resources we have are for normal conditions,” Mr. Hampton said. “This is nothing that any of us have ever seen before.”

At that point, all Mr. Tipton’s family could do was watch and yell as his cries for help grew intermittent.

At 10:51 p.m. — the time is seared into the minds of the people who watched it happen — Mr. Tipton’s body went limp and he fell headfirst into the water, which carried him out of sight.

Mr. Hampton, a Coast Guard veteran, said that if he and the other rescuers had perished while attempting to save Mr. Tipton, the entire county would have been without a river rescue team. The team carried out several dramatic rescues in other places during the storm, he said, including pulling five people from a hotel and saving two older residents from their home in Marshall as a rush of large debris flew down Main Street.

But the situation with Mr. Tipton was heartbreaking, he said.

“That was the worst one,” he said. “Because the family’s there, because you can’t do anything. We couldn’t get to him.”

On Sunday, a group of volunteers walked through the wasteland that Main Street in Marshall had become, searching through buildings with shovels for bodies. All they found to rescue were some American flags from a government building.

Mr. Tipton is survived by a daughter, his nieces and nephews, and a sister, Betty Pressley, 84, who lived across the road from him and left before the water rolled in.
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That's horrific

Curious, I looked up where this was. Rollins Road is literally riverside... Right at the banks.. To not have evacuated seems mind-blowing1000005230.png
 
Central NC should probably encourage clearing 10,000 Ilb trees that can fall on our houses
 
Mulberry Heel said:
I've read today it is estimated there are about a thousand people still missing and unaccounted for in NC and TN. I'm sure many of those people will be heard from, but no doubt the death toll in the NC mountains is going to go considerably higher, maybe even into the hundreds.
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uncgriff said:
And this, the most unkindest cut of all
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Lol
aGDevil2k said:
Those of us from NC or who have visited the mountains know, there are thousands of little roads that go off the beaten trail. Those roads often have 1-20 homes on them, usually smaller homes, and those road often follow valleys with nice babbling creeks. Well those creeks just became roaring rivers and I have to imagine there are many, many deaths in those areas where people have no idea nor have reached them at this point.

I would be floored if the death total is not much higher
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Spoke with a good friend by phone today that lives in exactly the type of community that you describe. She and her family were in the last vehicle to make out of their holler over a makeshift bridge. She’s a 4th generation Buncumber and not prone to exagerration. She said she had watched the homes of her friends slide down hillsides into the water and be carried away. She added that she figured that there were around 100 people dead in her community. I asked her if she had seen bodies and she said yes. This was about 15 miles east of AVL. This seems incredible but she was serious. And quite shaken.
 
aGDevil2k said:
That's horrific

Curious, I looked up where this was. Rollins Road is literally riverside... Right at the banks.. To not have evacuated seems mind-blowing1000005230.png
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Hard to blame the fire department. They went by twice and told him to go. Still haunting though. it must have been tough for the family to be helpless.

I live near a large tourist spot that is quite dangerous - it's a lighthouse with often very high surf. There are signs everywhere saying stay off the black rocks, which means they have been recently submerged or hit with ocean spray. There is a layer of algae on them that make them slicker than melting ice. If you full in you are likely to be trapped in a crevice, underwater debris, or pinned under a rock. You are then literally just pummeled to death by the waves in freezing cold water, or perhaps you drown. Rescues are near impossible and the fire department is 20 minute drive away. Every so often another fatality is added onto the list because people just won't listen to the signs.
 
donbosco said:
Lol



Spoke with a good friend by phone today that lives in exactly the type of community that you describe. She and her family were in the last vehicle to make out of their holler over a makeshift bridge. She’s a 4th generation Buncumber and not prone to exagerration. She said she had watched the homes of her friends slide down hillsides into the water and be carried away. She added that she figured that there were around 100 people dead in her community. I asked her if she had seen bodies and she said yes. This was about 15 miles east of AVL. This seems incredible but she was serious. And quite shaken.
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Thanks for the post I figured pushing the Like button was not doing it Justice
 
If anyone needs it: From my old roommate who owns laundromats around Hickory:

VIP Laundry​



We are so grateful to say that we made it through the storm, we have power, and are operating at our normal hours.

We welcome anyone who needs to catch up on laundry or just take advantage of our WiFi and get devices charged.
We are so heartbroken for all of yall who suffered damage and loss, especially for those who live farther west of us and were hit much harder than we were here in the foothills. We will continue to do whatever we can to help our community - and those devastated communities in our surrounding area.

Please be patient. We are one of the most western laundromats with power.
  • 101 Thornburg Dr SE, Conover, NC, United States, North Carolina

    +1 828-464-1777
 
I left out from Fairview this morning around 8 am - had to wait for enough light to do some things around the house. Headed down I-26 South but decided against the Shelby/hwy 74 route, instead going further south to the vicinity of Spartanburg.

Turned out I had less than a 1/2 tank and more like 1/3. Figured I could go 80-100 miles. Saw the first open station near Hendersonville - turned around backtracking only to find the line for the pumps at least a half mile long and hardly moving. I kept going.

About 20 more miles down the road I saw another open station (price sign lit up). I caught that exit and didn’t have to turn around and when I pulled up it was weirdly normal. Every pump was in use but no line. I pulled in behind a guy in a big truck (I drive a 2008 Toyota! It’s straight drive and I love it). Guy looks at me and says, “that doesn’t look like a diesel car. That’s all they’re selling here.” I took off.

Then past Inman, SC I saw another lit sign and hit the exit. Place was full but nothing like a half mile. My gas light was flickering. Pretty much had to do this stop. Not enough gas to carry on. After about 20 minuted I was at the pump. And it took cards. I pumped around 9.7 gallons into my 11 capacity tank. It was a damn good feeling. Me and the dogs weren’t gonna get stuck on the side of the road. Young woman with two kids had a ten dollar bill. Maybe they took cash, I don’t know. Didn’t care. I moved my car and she pulled forward and to celebrate I bought her a tank of gas. I asked her to pay it forward.

Never ever felt so good buying gas.

I’m in Strasburg, VA now. I’ll go the rest of the way to nyc tomorrow.

Leaving pretty much had to happen today or never. Staying longer would have resulted in my using more gas to keep devices charged and reducing my range dramatically. Everything was going downhill. I was even growing short on peanut butter. And dog food. Eventually the tub would be empty and I wouldn’t be able to flush.

Just said to myself, “Don’t be an old man” and hit the road.
 
NPR story others referenced about Spruce Pine:


“…
Quartz that comes, overwhelmingly, from Spruce Pine.

“As far as we know, there’s only a few places in the world that have ultra-high-quality quartz,” according to Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization. Russia and Brazil also supply high-quality quartz, he says, but“Spruce Pine has far and away the [largest amount] and highest quality.”

Conway says without super-pure quartz for the crucibles, which can often be used only a single time, it would be impossible to produce most semiconductors.

“Purity really does matter,” he says. “You're talking about a process to create the silicon wafers that later become silicon chips, where one single atom being in the wrong place” could derail production. …”
 
Zoo_View said:
Unless you live in a floodplain or a steep, narrow valley or on a barrier island, or next to a sound, you’re good.

This can easily happen at 2,000 feet. This will likely happen with greater frequency as the climate warms and there is more and more moisture in the atmosphere. Hurricanes and tropical storms and just normal storm fronts are bringing more-and-more rain.

Jeff Jackson, in his e-mail, referred to this as a 500-year flood. He’s likely wrong. It’s likely a 10-50 year flood.

Once recovery is successful, and rebuilding is starting, we have to ask, “Should we allow rebuilding in that spot?”

Biltmore Village? I’d argue it’s in a floodplain. No rebuilding there.

A house in a holler just above a creek? No rebuilding there.

Lake Lure Dam? Tear it down.
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I think that John Oliver had a segment on this a year or two back. He was essentially saying that by continuing to build (or rebuild) in some of these areas, we are simply throwing away money.
 
My wife's family is from Morganton (base of the mountain heading up to Asheville) and we visit multiple times a year. It's a great little town with an awesome little greenway that runs right along the Catawba river. Every time I go visit them we take the family out for a hike on that greenway, we'll usually stop at a halfway point for a beer and some snacks at the restaurant pictured below. What you see in the far background is the Catawba river, what is insane is that on a normal day there is about a 35 foot drop down a bank to it. It's just hard to fathom how much rain this area got. Her parents are still without cell service and are the only house on their street with power.

catawba.jpg
 
CHAMTRAIN said:
My wife's family is from Morganton (base of the mountain heading up to Asheville) and we visit multiple times a year. It's a great little town with an awesome little greenway that runs right along the Catawba river. Every time I go visit them we take the family out for a hike on that greenway, we'll usually stop at a halfway point for a beer and some snacks at the restaurant pictured below. What you see in the far background is the Catawba river, what is insane is that on a normal day there is about a 35 foot drop down a bank to it. It's just hard to fathom how much rain this area got. Her parents are still without cell service and are the only house on their street with power.

catawba.jpg
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Wow!!!

Yeah those restaurants are not sitting down at the water level
 
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