Helene’s Appalachian tsunami

Ginny Barker’s boots stuck fast in a thick layer of mud as she surveyed the wreckage of her daughter’s home in Swannanoa, N.C., in early October. Sticky brown muck coated everything—sidewalk, yard, walls, and windows—all the way up to the watermark high above her head.

Just a few days after the Swannanoa River burst its banks and swept through the neighborhood, Barker and her family started sorting through ruined belongings—saving what they could and dragging the rest to the curb. The ­initial cleanup efforts will take weeks. But it will take months, if not years, to recover from the damage Hurricane Helene wrought.

The Category 4 storm barreled up from Florida’s swamps to the mountains of North Carolina on Sept. 27, dumping over 40 trillion gallons of rain across the Southeast. The area’s rivers, including the Swannanoa, swelled to historic highs, carrying away anything in their paths. With more than 230 people confirmed dead, and others still missing, Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005.

According to one estimate, Helene caused up to $47.5 billion worth of property damage—and uninsured flood losses comprised between 42 and 63 percent of it.

The Barkers, and others living in Helene’s path, can apply for relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A letter from the agency informed their daughter she qualifies for about $42,500 in aid because of the extent of the damage to her home. But the agency’s resources are stretched thin: By the end of September, FEMA had already spent $38 billion of its nearly $40 billion budget for “major declarations.” And that was before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on Oct. 9. Early estimates suggest Milton’s damage also could top billion-dollar double digits, although much of that is insured.

AT AROUND 6 A.M. on Sept. 27, rain spattered the windshield as Barker and her husband clambered into their pickup and drove off into the dark. Their daughter had just texted to say the water around her house was rising fast. Now, they were speeding to her rescue.

Less than an hour later, the Barkers, together with their daughter and 12-year-old granddaughter, drove back over the main bridge spanning the Swannanoa River as water poured across.

At around 10:15 a.m., Barker’s daughter got a text message from her neighbors. They were on their roof. “The water is up to your gutters,” they told her. The whole street was underwater.

The neighborhood offered some of the area’s rare affordable housing, Barker said, but only one person on the street had flood insurance. At more than double regular homeowners insurance, it was just too expensive for most.

The Barkers didn’t wait for FEMA to begin the grueling task of rebuilding. Inside their daughter’s house, books, clothing, photos—remnants of what now seemed like a previous life—lay soiled and trampled in the muck. The family tore out drywall and old beadboard, stripping the house down to its insulation to keep mold from taking over.

Workers clear belongings and mud from a store in Asheville in the aftermath of Helene. Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

Across town, Barker and her husband moved their home office into their bedroom to make space for their daughter and granddaughter to move in. The power came on about a week after Helene hit, but the Barkers—along with as many as 100,000 others in Western North Carolina—still didn’t have running water through mid-October. In the interim, they scooped water from a neighbor’s swimming pool to flush their toilets. “You just fish the leaves out before you pour it in the tank,” Barker said.

Without water, other normal aspects of life were also slow to resume. Asheville schools fixed an initial Oct. 28 restart date, but by mid-October, Buncombe County schools still hadn’t scheduled their return.

As thousands of families struggled to secure basic necessities and establish new routines, others faced an even heavier loss: the death of loved ones. In Buncombe County alone, at least 72 people died. About a week after the storm hit, Barker and her husband walked down to a park near their house and smelled something in the river “that was not dead fish.”

They reported it to the police and found out later that authorities pulled three bodies from the water.

The topography of the Blue Ridge Mountains created a haphazard pattern of destruction. Low-lying areas suffered severe flooding, while steep hillsides fell away in catastrophic landslides. After the storm, some remote Appalachian communities had to be accessed on all-terrain vehicles, via helicopter, or even on muleback. Extensive damage to roads and bridges will also slow the work of recovery and rebuilding.

A few of the most severely affected areas in Western North Carolina include Old Fort, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and Lake Lure. The town of Chimney Rock was pretty much “wiped off the map” in places, Barker said.

Back in Swannanoa, landlord Michael Outar lost six rental properties when the river flooded them 3 to 4 feet deep. Overnight, about 90 percent of Outar’s rental income vanished. “I put all my eggs in one basket, and that basket fell and broke all the eggs,” Outar said. “And so I’m trying to pick up the pieces.”

Unlike Barker’s daughter, Outar did have flood insurance. But he said the policy doesn’t include compensation for the rent he’s losing while making repairs, something regular homeowners insurance usually covers. And he isn’t eligible for FEMA assistance, since that only applies to primary residences. That means Outar will have to take out a loan to cover the property mortgages until his buildings are habitable again.

Helene struck during Outar’s prime earning season—when crowds of “leaf lookers” normally flock to the area for its breathtaking fall scenery. The storm dealt a major blow to the local economy, which relies on tourism and small businesses. No one wants to vacation in a disaster zone.

Still, Outar and Barker both praised the outpouring of care and support from local churches, neighbors, and nonprofits. Barker said she has met some of her neighbors for the first time ever, and her family has started joining friends nearby for dinner most evenings.

Many relief workers have arrived from the outside, too, and weeks after the storm, the streets still bustled with law enforcement, electrical trucks, and search-and-rescue workers. Volunteers with Samaritan’s Purse, the Red Cross, and the local nonprofit Hearts with Hands continued to bring in U-Haul trucks full of supplies.

But Barker knows the immediate disaster relief will soon clear out and the news cycle will roll on. After that, locals face the long slog toward normalcy. One chart Barker found online estimates communities often take two years to emotionally recover from a disaster of this scale.

Already, Barker feels the first wave of adrenaline wearing off. And she wonders how Helene will “change the face of the region” in the long run. How many people will be forced to move away because they lost their homes and their jobs?

She says the cascading consequences of this hurricane aren’t just a “ripple effect” across Western North Carolina: “They’re tsunami effects on every area of life.”