Hurricane Helen aftermath: Dozens still missing as search enters second week

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Weary residents of Julian Johnson’s neighborhood in Asheville have been living without electricity ever since. hurricane helen It hit the Southeast last week and changed their lives forever. They’ve been cooking on propane stoves, following local events on dry erase boards and wondering when the lights will come back on.

Johnson, who has a 5-year-old son and works for a land conservation organization, received an email from Duke Energy promising power would be restored by Friday night. But as of midday, utility poles and wires were still hanging at odd angles across the street and being pulled down by fallen trees.

“You never know what’s going to happen next,” Johnson said. Johnson’s family has some electricity thanks to a generator. “It’s kind of surprising just that this is widespread throughout this area.”

Since Helen came ashore on September 26, she and her neighbors have been looking after each other. Category 4 hurricane And as it moved north from Florida, it carved out a path of destruction. killed at least 220 people The outbreaks occurred in six states, including at least 72 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville. The block captain will set up a whiteboard with information about who can provide first aid and where tools can be repaired.

Nearly 700,000 homes and businesses remain without power, mostly in the Carolinas and Georgia, according to an announcement Friday. power outage.us. That’s an improvement from five days earlier, when more than 2 million customers were without power, and North Carolina’s leading provider, Duke Energy, said many of its affected customers had lost power by Sunday night. He said he was hopeful that power could be restored. But for about 100,000 customers in hard-hit areas, it could be next week or even longer, company spokesman Bill Norton said.

“We’re talking about places where houses no longer exist,” Norton said, adding that part of the road where utility poles once stood has been completely washed away.

The company said it missed Friday’s goal of restoring power to nearly all customers in South Carolina and is preparing for Sunday. Dominion Energy also said it will take longer than originally expected to restore power to the state’s hardest-hit counties.

Work on public facilities is progressing slowly.

Along Swannanoa River Road on the east side of Asheville, Duke Energy and its contractors spread out Friday afternoon to install about 20 new utility poles in an area where many of the old poles had been snapped or washed away by flooding.

David Martin, who has worked in the area for 30 years in engineering work for Duke University, said the damage was far worse than anything he had seen before.

“During the restoration, most of the facility is there and we usually just put the wires back together,” Martin said. “In this case, you have to start everything new: new poles, new wires, new transformers, new services. It’s all washed away.”

Just digging a hole and putting up a single pole can take up to two hours, Martin said. That does not include the time required to install equipment or reline. Because the company has underground facilities, it cannot use boring machines like drills to dig many of the holes along the road.

“Many of them have gas lines, so you have to dig the holes by hand,” Martin said.

Although there were some pre-storm utility poles that workers were trying to save, much of the infrastructure was completely gone. Part of Duke’s line was swept down the center of the city’s golf course fairway and became tangled in utility poles and trees.

And, like much of Western North Carolina, before the power company can finish restoring the lines, someone must first rebuild the washed-out roads.

dream of a hot shower

storm Damaged water facilities It is so serious and widespread that one federal official said it was “considered unprecedented.” Repairs may take several weeks.

A lack of clean running water made Asheville’s woes even worse.

“I want to take a shower,” says Sue Lyles, who lives in a tourist-friendly town known for its art galleries, shops and breweries. “It would be great to have flowing water.”

Even undrinkable water is in short supply. Some people brought buckets from streams to flush toilets. Officials are also advising people to collect non-potable water for household needs from local pools.

Without a complete repair of the water system, schools may not be able to resume in-person classes. Hospitals may not be able to resume normal operations Hotels and restaurants may not fully reopen.

Lives lost across the Southeast

More than a dozen people died in Florida tampa areathe worst damage occurred on a narrow 20-mile (32-kilometer) barrier island that stretches from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.

“The water came so fast,” said Dave Bellinger, who survived the storm at home by telling his wife to run. “Even though I wanted to get out, I couldn’t get out.”

Among the dead was former restaurant owner Aiden Bowles, who did not want to leave his home on Indian Rocks Beach, a barrier island north of St. Petersburg. Caregiver Amanda Normand begged her 71-year-old widow to stay with her inland.

“He said, ‘It’s going to be fine. I’m going to bed,'” Normand said of his last call on the night of Sept. 26.

In North Carolina, exhausted rescue workers and volunteers braved washed-out roads, downed power lines and mudslides to reach stranded and missing people. In Buncombe County, authorities announced Friday that about 75 people remain missing.

“We know these are difficult times, but we want you to know that it will come eventually,” Buncombe Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “We’re coming for you. We’re coming for people.”

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Associated Press Writer Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Jeffrey Collins of Columbia, South Carolina; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio contributed to this report.