Chris Carlson/AP Photo
Volunteers unload supplies at Watauga High School, October 3, 2024, in Boone, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Three weeks after Hurricane Helene gutted western North Carolina, thousands of Asheville residents still lack clean drinking water. North Fork Reservoir, the source of 80 percent of the city’s water, sustained immense damage and nearly two million people have been directed to boil their water before using it. Hundreds of roads have been designated as essential travel–only routes. Debris removal continues.
As difficult as the situation is in Asheville, the conditions in more remote regions of the Blue Ridge Mountains are particularly dire. The storm unleashed catastrophic mudslides and flooding in the towns and villages deep in the mountains around Appalachian State University, one of the area’s major hubs. Many roads leading in and out of these areas were inaccessible to vehicles, and some rescuers and nurses rode in on horses to deliver food and supplies.
The death toll in North Carolina is nearly 100.
Located in Boone, the university known locally as App State is less than 100 miles north of Asheville. The town had expected a few inches of rain, but Boone Creek, a major waterway running through campus, inundated the university’s academic buildings. Students and faculty had only a few hours to evacuate. A stone’s throw from the Dogwood Residence Hall, a gaping sinkhole opened outside Legends, a venue for student events. The Blue Ridge Parkway, a student hot spot for scenic drives, dates, and graduation photos, is a mess of tree limbs and unstable hillsides. Classes just resumed last week.
As the recovery continues, App State is now the center of those relief efforts. The Red Cross operates out of the university’s Convocation Center, where displaced Watauga County residents sleep on flimsy cots and watch the damage surveys unfold on their phones. Just five months earlier, the members of the class of 2024 received their diplomas. I was one of them.
The residents of the unincorporated communities scattered around App State are forced to reckon with decades of political and economic neglect and now the Helene recovery. They also fear that America will once again forget all about Appalachia now that Helene has literally stripped away its appeal as a climate sanctuary.
In 2021, the Pulitzer Center posed the question “Western North Carolina, Climate Refuge?” Last year, the University of Virginia projected a mass migration to the mountains from the Deep South. Seeking to outrun climate change–driven heat waves and convinced that Appalachia would be more bearable, many transplants answered yes and settled in Asheville and the wider Appalachian region.
Western North Carolina, however, is caught between the two extremes of the climate crisis: Some areas suffer droughts and wildfires, and others experience heavy rainfall, flooding, and landslides. The “wettest” period in the region’s history occurred from 2015 to 2018, with precipitation increases in the spring but bone-dry summers and autumns. Winters are shorter and there’s less snow. By the end of the century, prolonged heat waves and temperatures surpassing 95 degrees will be Appalachia’s new normal.
WCNC-TV
This image from a news report shows floodwaters rushing through King Street, in downtown Boone, North Carolina, on September 27, 2024.
Watauga County—Boone is the county seat—saw over 200 residential and commercial units condemned, and at least two trailer parks were completely submerged. It could have been worse. In Boone, clearing culverts and unblocking river channels in problem areas like floodplains mitigated the damage. Mayor Pro Tem Dalton George told the Prospect that the town’s proactive work saved lives.
Known for outdoor activities like cycling, kayaking, and hiking, Todd, a small community north of Boone on the south fork of the New River, sustained substantial damage. Residents make frequent trips to Boone, with coolers for ice and nonperishable food. Many community members could not wait for state or federal government workers to reach them and took on the burden of cleaning up debris and feeding their neighbors.
The acts of goodwill have been overshadowed by the politicization of Helene, which has deepened Appalachia’s uneasy relationship with the rest of the country. Former President Trump and others have spread disinformation as fast as the Biden administration, members of Congress, and state and local officials can counter the falsehoods. Then there’s the alarming number of Americans who still associate Appalachia with “hillbillies” who voted against their own interests, condemning Appalachians for simply being “Republican territory.”
“Hurricane Helene … what if GOD is punishing MAGA populations for their hate and hypocrisy?” a former University of Kentucky staffer wrote on X. “Works for me!” She made sure to add a winky face to accentuate her point.
These attitudes ignore the region’s multicultural richness and resilience. “I’m tired and sad and pissed off,” Mark Powell, director of App State’s creative writing department, told the Prospect on his drive to Winston-Salem for supplies. “Far too many people hear ‘Appalachia’ and imagine not a region, but a problem. Too poor, too backward, they ‘got what they deserved.’ Appalachia has been treated like an internal colony for 200 years. It’s deeply disturbing to find rhetoric from the left every bit as nasty as rhetoric from the right.”
The volunteers at Boone’s Watauga Medical Center and the Red Cross are university students, faculty, and alumni who returned to help. The Red Cross had to turn away new volunteers because they received too many. “In three, four days, the whole community has come together,” says freshman Appalachian State student Lyle Michael. “This really tested people’s humanity.”
Michael and four other students set up App State Helping Hand on Instagram to verify and repost evacuation routes, supply drops, and donation links. “I’ve seen a few people say that Appalachian State students deserve to lose their homes, deserved to lose their vehicles,” says Michael. “And for the people who are missing or no longer with us that they deserved it. That is truly some of the worst things you could say to somebody. This is where they live. You can’t just pick up your house and take it with you.”
The Walmart Supercenter where Michael bought cheap groceries and medications has closed to repair severe flood damage. Michael, who suffers from a chronic illness, says its closure made it difficult for him and his friends to buy prescriptions at affordable prices. Walmart has deployed a mobile pharmacy in its parking lot to fill prescriptions and administer immunizations. The company has yet to announce a timeline for the location’s reopening.
Given their proximity to the university and their appeal to nature-loving tourists, and investors looking for luxury vacation homes, towns like Boone and Blowing Rock are likely to see more energy and funding invested in the recovery. Meanwhile, 55 percent of Boone’s 19,000 residents live below the poverty level and struggle to find affordable homes.
The smaller places will require targeted investments in the climate-resilient infrastructure they need to withstand the deluges to come. After the collapse of the coal industry in the early 2000s, the plans to undertake climate mitigation projects to shore up Appalachian roads, buildings, and, most importantly, dams, slowed. The Associated Press has reported that the state had the second-highest number of dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition in the country. The highest-risk dams managed to hold up during Helene but will need shoring up.
The investments that Appalachia needed took a back seat to partisan bickering, leaving the poorest residents in limbo, struggling with poverty and high unemployment. Now the region heads into an uncertain future as the climate crisis intensifies. “It’s perhaps a cliché,” says Powell of Appalachian State. “But people in the mountains tend to live closer to the land. I think it makes us better stewards. But what is coming—what is already here—is bigger than a people or a region. And it scares me.”
