Johnathan Walker:'So many hollers': Appalachia's remote terrain slows recovery from Helene

MEAT CAMP,Johnathan Walker N.C. — Carolyn and Clifford Coffee’s home is less than 10 miles from Boone, a North Carolina mountain town popular with tourists and home to a college campus, set between a creek and steep hillsides.

The two-lane road to reach it, which winds past cornfields and cattle farms, heading upwards along Meat Camp creek, is now dotted with washed-out pavement and bridges, downed powerlines and damaged homes.

The couple, Carolyn, 77, and Clifford, 80, have lived here for 40 years. Clifford built their home himself by connecting two trailers. But Hurricane Helene’s torrential rains, which caused deadly landslides and floods, left Carolyn terrified. “We just prayed to God,” she said.

Their home survived, but getting help into such rural mountain areas has proven difficult. Many lack power, water and cell service. And it’s likely to take a long time to rebuild the area or make it safer from floods or landslides. 

“I want to move,” she said, looking at her husband. “He don’t want to.”

Days after Hurricane Helene contributed to rainfall totals of up to 30 inches in some parts of North Carolina and left at least 160 people dead across the Southeast, residents of nearby Boone are cleaning up flood damage to homes and infrastructure. Power, cell service and many businesses were back in operation.

But in more rural areas of Watauga County and others nearby, where landslides scarred Appalachian slopes and the storm sent water thundering into narrow valleys, the damage to roads, homes and the power grid was more severe. About 200 county roads remained inaccessible. Rescue crews had taken to foot and horseback to reach some residents. 

The same factors that made the storm so devastating also make recovery and rebuilding slower and more difficult, according to officials, recovery volunteers and residents. 

“There’s just so many hollers,” said Chris Blanton, who is leading a Baptist volunteer recovery effort in and around Boone this week. “It's going to be years, probably, instead of months, trying to get back to normal.”

The challenges wrought by Helene in more remote mountain communities are also bringing renewed attention to longer-term mitigation efforts in such areas at a time when climate change is expected to fuel more frequent extreme weather, said Antonia Sebastian, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies climate and flood risks.

Storm brings new needs

Lindsey Miller pulled into a drive-through feeding kitchen at a church in Boone this week, thanking volunteers who handed her Styrofoam boxes with hot dogs and green beans. 

Miller lives in a home built on a hillside near Todd, north of Boone, with her autistic son and baby. The storm washed out her gravel drive, damaged the roads and toppled power lines.

She can still reach her fast food job, but on Tuesday, there was no power, cell service or water. Nearby residents hauled buckets of river water to flush toilets. Neighbors shared food and supplies. 

Her mother, who lives next to her, doesn’t have insurance. She said the storm was a wake-up call to be better prepared. “I told mom, ‘You need some kind of insurance.” 

William Holt, Watauga County’s Emergency Services Director, said on Tuesday that the county fielded more than 2,000 911 calls the first day of the storm.  Two people died in landslides, he said. Several dozen remained sheltered at the university and more were staying with family or friends. Many hotels were renting rooms only to locals or storm recovery workers.

Help has poured into the city from volunteer groups, water rescue teams, the National Guard, power utilities, tree companies, the Red Cross and others. Officials said they were working to add more locations for water, hot meals, showers, restrooms and cell phone charging stations.

He said the storm constituted "the worst natural disaster in modern history" in his county.

In an interview, Holt said recovery would be complicated by the terrain and housing patterns, with homes often scattered along creeks that turned into torrents.

“And it's not quick fixes,” he said.

As Boone digs out, remote area braces for long road to recovery

In Boone on Tuesday, restaurant staff were cleaning out mud from floors and parking lots. In one neighborhood, mud coated a street of flooded homes where volunteers helped families. About 200 structures have been deemed unsafe, officials said.

Holt said the storm's fallout may take an economic bite in the area, impacting everyone from small business owners to those relying on tourism. Right now, officials are asking tourists not to come so that recovery work can proceed.

Further outside of town, people were mucking out homes and putting mattresses and belongings by the road. Some residents and crews worked to temporarily patch washed out sections of road along Meat Camp Creek to make it navigable.

Roy Dobyns Jr., a Baptist pastor in Boone who lives outside of town, said it has taken a toll on some people’s mental health. And it’s created long-term struggles for people who will have to wait weeks for power or repairs. 

“All the bridges and roads blew up, so they can’t get to them. A five-minute drive takes an hour,” he said.

Once everyone is reached and their immediate recovery needs met, Sebastian said longer-term mitigation efforts are needed for mountainous areas. The state is at a good starting point given its experience with hurricanes hitting the coast, she said, though the challenges in remote mountain areas don't lend themselves to easy answers.

Enacting measures to buffer residents from disasters – from installing infrastructure such as piping and drainage systems to bolstering financial and health protections for vulnerable people – are costly and face an array of challenges, experts said.

In Meat Camp, a community thought to be named because hunters once dressed animals there, Clifford sat on his porch sipping tea mixed with orange juice. Across the yard were chickens kept for their grandchildren. Nearby was a tree branch he’d used to prop up a fallen power line, its lines splayed across the yard.

Clifford, in his eighth decade, still works mowing several lawns. When he suggested he sometimes struggled to get it done, Carolyn interjected. “You do good,” she told him, arguing that he could still outwork a 30-year-old.

If they could afford to leave, Clifford – unlike his wife – doesn’t want to. Even if he had known how bad the storm was going to be, he said he’d have probably chosen to stay put in their place framed by scenic mountains. His wife pointed out that he navigated the broken roads to get to church the day after the storm.

But she worries another similar storm will take down the hillside or cut them off again: “Like you need to go to the doctor, you can’t,” she said. “You can’t get in touch with anybody.”

Whether to move away from an area that people may decide is too risky in Helene's wake, Holt said, is a difficult conversation many may be having in the months to come.