Southerners stay in touch the old-fashioned way after Helene cuts roads, power, phones
Hurricane Helene has left millions without electricity, water and phone service across the Southeast in the six days since making landfall
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Isolated and without electricity or phone service since Hurricane Helene inflicted devastation across the Southeast nearly a week ago, residents in the mountains of western North Carolina are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping.
At the town square in Black Mountain, local leaders stood atop a picnic table shouting updates about when power might be restored. One woman took notes to pass along to her neighbors. Alongside a fencerow, a makeshift message board listed the names of people still missing. In other areas, mules delivered medical supplies to mountaintop homes. Residents collected water from creeks and cooked over camp stoves. And across the region, people were looking after each other.
President Joe Biden, after surveying the area by helicopter on Wednesday, praised the Democratic governor of North Carolina and the Republican governor of South Carolina for their responses to the storm, saying that in the wake of disasters, “we put politics aside.”
While government cargo planes brought food and water into the hardest-hit areas and rescue crews waded through creeks searching for survivors, those who made it through the storm, whose death toll has topped 180, leaned on one another — not technology.
