‘I just broke down’ – Helene’s emotional trauma for survivors

Days after a tropical storm inundated parts of North Carolina with catastrophic flooding, leaving dozens dead and hundreds more missing, entire communities are starting to come to terms with the damage. heavy and for some, a narrow escape.

For more than 40 years, Nancy Berry’s trailer in the town of Boone was a mountain oasis and her family’s home.

It is where she creates memories with family and friends, and where she preserves the memories of those who have passed away. Her mother died in the same trailer.

But it only took a few hours for Hurricane Helene to wipe it all away.

Now, the 77-year-old is trying to salvage what’s left. On her bed, still soaked with floodwater, she placed mementos that told her who she was and where she came from.

At the top is her son’s death certificate from when he died of Covid three years ago.

“I grabbed it and laid it out,” she told the BBC. “I have to protect my family’s history. However, a lot of it has been lost.”

It was Mrs. Berry’s niece who rescued her, helping her wade through water 3 to 4 feet deep.

“They kept calling me – thank God for cell phones. You never know, a long time ago, what will happen,” Ms. Berry recalled.

When her granddaughter arrived, she found Mrs. Berry trying to save some of her belongings by hanging them up high.

“Aunt nanny. Try your best. Get out. Come out,” she called.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Miss Berry replied. She grabbed her purse, giving it to her niece, who held it over her head while helping Ms. Berry to safety.

“She was very strong and she was pushing and pulling me and that water – ,” Ms. Berry said with a shudder. “It wasn’t a pretty moment.”

As flood waters rose, others on her street had to be rescued by boat.

Ms. Berry’s hometown is a relatively quiet place nestled among the mountains, with a population of about 20,000 people.

Its landscape is marked by creeks and rivers flowing under towering green trees that reach into the clouds.

It is also home to Appalachian State University, which converted one of its campuses into an emergency shelter for those devastated by the storm.

Communities like this can be quite isolated – built on a dirt road on the side of a mountain. Such characteristics add to the Boone’s beauty – but also add to its vulnerability.

Two people were reported by local media outlets to have died in surrounding Watauga County.

Western North Carolina, located more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) from the ocean, is no stranger to storms, said Kathie Dello, a climate expert at North Carolina State University.

Six people died when a tropical storm caused “catastrophic” flooding in nearby Carusoe – but never before, she said. At least 180 people are now known to have died. More than 600 people are still missing. Thousands of people are without electricity and fresh water supplies are dwindling.

The government deployed 6,000 National Guard members and 4,800 federal relief workers to the area, but many have criticized the response, saying much of the rescue effort was left to volunteers.

“We were cut off [the outside world] in about three days,” said Kennie McFee, Green Valley fire chief.

“Here it’s mostly neighbors helping neighbors.”

Diello told the BBC that the cities of Boone and Asheville were hit hard, but remote communities deep in the Appalachian Mountains were also in dire straits.

Even before the storm, cellular reception and Wi-Fi were spotty. Poverty and rough roads in the countryside have added to the difficulty of people getting out.

“A lot of times people say ‘Oh, why don’t they just leave?'” Diello said. “Maybe you can’t afford a tank of gas, and how many nights in a hotel in a safer place? Yes Maybe you know you can’t leave your family, maybe you can’t leave your job.”

In Green Valley, a woman who did not want the BBC to use her name said that five days after the storm, she was still without power and had no contact with the outside world.

Her only working device is a battery-powered antenna radio that she said is decades old.

“If you grow up in the mountains, you can cope,” she said.

While speaking to the BBC, a car drove up to tell her about her family living at the end of the road. She hadn’t seen or heard from them since the storm hit.

“They are all fine, thank God again,” she said.

Although she recalls bad storms, this woman said she had never seen anything like Helene.

Less than a five-minute walk from where she stood on the street, another house was completely flattened.

“God is getting everyone’s attention,” she said. He is really attracting everyone’s attention, not just here but everywhere.” “But I really think it’s just to show us who’s in control.”

Nicole Rojas, 25, moved to her remote home in the mountains in Vilas, North Carolina not long ago from nearby Tennessee, where she had been living, in her own words, “off the grid.”

“I wish I could stick to my lifestyle a little bit, because I always have drinking water, bath water and food,” she told the BBC while searching for supplies in Boone.

Now, she and her roommates, including a 54-year-old woman named Karen, Karen’s 74-year-old mother and a family with young children, could be without power for weeks, she heard, with the only to enter and on a one-lane, tree-lined road.

“The only reason I was able to get out was because the gentlemen in the community took their chainsaws and tractors and moved all the trees,” she said.

Ms. Rojas was at home Friday when the storm hit the mountains. On Sunday, after her neighbors spent all day Saturday clearing the road, she and Karen ventured into town. Karen, who amid the chaos of the storm suffered a life-threatening allergic reaction after being stung by an insect, took the items back to their home.

Meanwhile, Ms. Rojas stayed in Boone with friends so she could go to work at a local medical store. She plans to return home with more supplies on Wednesday.

At work, things finally hit her after hearing another customer’s story.

“She had to drive past a truck that was carrying dead bodies there and she started crying,” she recalls. “And that’s when I broke down.”

“You hear people’s horror stories about how their entire house literally just slid down the mountain.”

“I feel like I just survived the apocalypse.”