A North Carolina mountainside town has been cut off from the rest of the world, “forever changed” by the ferocity of Hurricane Helen, with residents calling the destruction “absolutely overwhelming.”
“Chimney Rock was just destroyed and changed forever,” said Brett Johnson, 59, who lives in a small tourist town about an hour southeast of Asheville.
“We've always had a beautiful house here, and now it's just dirt and rock,” he told the Post. “Where that bank should have been, there was a brewery, a Mexican restaurant, a hotel, and those are all gone.”
Far from being flooded with tourists, Chimney Rock has been the site of several days of swarming police, sanitation crews and North Carolina Department of Transportation engineers since Hurricane Helen hit, killing at least 232 people across the Southeast. We have created a map of the damage caused by the storm.
“On a nice day like this, this place is full of tourists — packed — but we're the only ones here. All the neighbors have left,” Johnson said. .
And the few who survive, like the Johnsons, call themselves “sole survivors.”
Teddy Cooper, 53, who lives along the road in Lake Lure, said: “Several residents around me were cleaning their places and collecting what they could, but they were still traumatized.'' It seemed like there was.”
“They still seemed shocked even though it had been a week.”
“Chimney Rock is in complete disrepair,” Cooper said. “Almost everything is gone. The land is no longer there.”
“It's crazy, it's unbelievable, it's insane…This is a happy town, a place where people come to have fun. Everyone wants to see everyone happy instead of this destruction and devastation. I’m used to it.”
Helen's path of destruction
- Helen slammed into Florida's Big Bend coastline Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane, pounding the state with wind gusts of 155 miles per hour. Killed at least 13 people.
- Helen moved northeast into Georgia and weakened to a tropical storm by Friday morning, but brought with it winds and flooding. 25 people were killed In the state.
- By Friday afternoon, Helen had traveled through parts of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. At least 29 people died.
- Relentless rain pounded Appalachia Friday night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountain towns.
- A tornado struck the Asheville, North Carolina area, killing at least 35 people. 15 injured at Rocky Mount.
- Over the weekend, rescue teams struggled to clear roads and recover bodies. The death toll stands at 192 and continues to rise.
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Chimney Rock was just one of many small towns across Appalachia that were destroyed by Hurricane Helen. It remains largely cut off from the outside world, with roads washed away and power outages continuing.
Like many mountain towns, Chimney Rock was affected by the historic flooding that hit the area. After the once-in-a-millennium rains brought the River Helen, the local Broad River swelled ten times its previous size, swallowing large swathes of the town as its banks widened.
“I saw houses falling into the water one after another. “They fell like dominoes and when they hit the water they just shattered and were just chewed up into nothing.” said Johnson, who survived the storm by climbing a canyon wall in a community near the Batcave.
However, even upstream, very few people were saved. Rain pouring down the mountainside triggered a landslide that tore off the foundation of the house and sent a tree through the roof, both of which caused extensive damage to Johnson's home.
“The storm was just angry,” Johnson said. “There must have been a tornado because all the monster trees are just twisted up on the mountainside where we live.”
Local communities can barely even communicate with each other. Just a few days ago, Bat Cave and Chimney Rock were connected by a 3.4-mile road, but today only about 1,000 feet of that route remains intact. Lake Lure and Chimney Rock have been completely cut off and police are preventing people from attempting the now dangerous route.
“Helicopters have been flying over the valley constantly for the last three or four days looking for bodies,” Johnson said. “All of our food is deteriorating rapidly, rapidly.”
Other than Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which burst levees in New Orleans and killed more than 1,000 people, Helen was the worst hurricane to hit the United States in nearly half a century.
The death toll is expected to rise further as response forces continue to search for hundreds of missing people and communities grapple with ongoing power outages and contaminated water supplies.
Once the Johnsons repair their home's foundation and pull the 150-foot tree from their living room roof, they plan to live in an RV away from Bat Cave and Chimney Rock for the next year, but they don't know how long that will take. . Communities can rebuild even the most basic infrastructure.
“I won't be able to drive down the road to my house for at least another year,” Johnson said.
