North Carolina residents contend with grief, lack of supplies as they rebuild after Helene

It’s been more than three weeks since Hurricane Helene battered parts of the Southeast. The hardest-hit state was North Carolina, where more than 90 people died, 81 people remain unaccounted for and residents face a long road to recovery. Laura Barrón-López reports from Asheville.
Geoff Bennett:
It has been more than three weeks since Hurricane Helene battered parts of the Southeast. The hardest-hit state was North Carolina, where more than 90 people died, 81 people remain unaccounted for, and residents there face a long road to recovery.
Laura Barron-Lopez has this report from Asheville.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Forty-two-year-old Patricia Miranda has lived at this Asheville mobile home for more than two decades. She’s seen flooding in the city before, but nothing like Hurricane Helene. She captured this video on Facebook Live.
Miranda says that day is still etched in the minds of her young children.
Patricia Miranda, Asheville, North Carolina, Resident:
My little one wake up every day at the morning: “Mommy, let’s go. The water’s coming.”
So, how can I explain that everything is done?
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Three weeks on, Miranda’s trailer still has no power or drinkable water. Nearby tanks are filled with water for showering and flushing toilets. To make matters worse, temperatures in Western North Carolina have dropped in recent days, with lows in the 30s.
Patricia Miranda:
My house is really cold, because that doesn’t have no insulation under — so we have to wait. But thank God we have where we can sleep, where we can stay, and I’m able to cook for my family and for my neighbors. I have to keep going. I have to be strong for my family, especially for my kids.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Late last month, Helene’s fury stretched from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian mountains. Torrential rain sent rivers and creeks in Asheville as well as the rural communities that surround it over their banks.
This area hundreds of miles from where Helene made landfall found itself completely underwater in some parts and decimated by landslides in others.
Bryan Craig, Western North Carolina Resident:
What you’re looking at is family land.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
About 15 miles southeast of Asheville, Bryan Craig lost far more than the family homes he grew up in. Eleven of Craig’s relatives were killed when the storm washed away this hillside, including his mother and father.
Bryan Craig:
Just a total shock. And it was like that for a week. Just couldn’t believe it. You hope it’s a nightmare. You don’t wake up and it’s a nightmare. But that’s probably the only way to explain it.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
As the Craig’s prepare for days and days of funerals, they’re also contemplating the future of the land they have owned for at least 80 years.
Bryan Craig:
The immediate response from everybody is, I’m moving. I can’t live here. I don’t think we will build anything here anymore. We’re going to try to make it look beautiful again and maybe have a place to come have family reunions or people in the community can come have cookouts or something like that.
I mean, that’s what’s next. We have got to figure out what we’re going to do after all the cleanup and just get it to where it can be a place for us to come back to.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
While many communities here continue to grieve, they have also had to practice patience as crews work to remove debris and restore utilities.
Esther Manheimer, Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina: This storm knocked out both the main line and the redundant line.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer says plenty of work remains. It could be weeks until residents have potable water again.
Do you think that there’s anything that could have been done differently to better prepare for something like this?
Esther Manheimer:
No, I don’t think so. I don’t know on the budget of a local government how you create systems that are resilient enough to withstand a catastrophic event like this without any failure. I don’t think that’s possible.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The mayor and other officials warn that misinformation and conspiracy theories, especially about the federal response, continue to complicate recovery efforts in a region that never expected a storm of this magnitude.
Esther Manheimer:
The biggest tragedy to me is if someone doesn’t get the benefit they are allowed to get or are entitled to because they believe one of these conspiracy theories.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The mayor herself has been the target of online attacks and threats, including antisemitism.
Esther Manheimer:
It can take your focus off of the recovery effort and for me, created a terrible concern about just how people in this world think about challenges like we’re facing right now, that they want to find a scapegoat, that they want to find someone to blame, instead of doing what everyone I see here doing, which is helping a neighbor, coming together as a community, helping one another try to recover from this catastrophe.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Across Western North Carolina, armies of volunteers are still working to fill the gaps.
Jerry Cahill, Asheville, North Carolina, Resident:
Yes, keep coming.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Jerry Cahill’s screen printing studio in Asheville’s River Arts District was flattened by Helene.
Jerry Cahill:
Like, I don’t have a job to come back to right now, so my free time has been freed up to help volunteer and do what I can for the community.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Cahill and some fellow artists brought water tanks to low-income and elderly residents so they could flush their toilets.
Now, as some taps come back on, they’re pumping and rerouting water to areas that still need it. Donations keep flowing into distribution sites, like this one serving people in hard-hit Swannanoa.
Jenalee Tipton works with the Silverado’s concert venue, whose stage now holds boxes of diapers and other supplies. She says residents are moving into a new phase of recovery as they regain power and apply for aid.
Jenalee Tipton, Western North Carolina Resident:
We ask them, like, have you tried applying for FEMA? Because it’s there, it’s available. Take advantage of that resource while you’re displaced or while you don’t have a job or income. I just think that they may be automatically saying that they will be denied, which is sad, because we just try to encourage them to try.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
It’s still unclear how long it will take before life starts to feel normal again.
In Asheville, Mayor Manheimer is committed to rebuilding the city, but acknowledges the long-term challenges it faces.
Esther Manheimer:
We’re being compared to Katrina, which obviously resulted in, I think it was about half the population of New Orleans left initially.
And so we don’t want to see that kind of impact in our community. We need to get things normalized as quickly as possible to lessen the loss of people and businesses in our community that make us such a special place. And we’re acutely aware of that.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
For Patricia Miranda, the storm changed everything.
Patricia Miranda:
Probably in the future, I will move. I’m going to move from here, because this is going to happen again. This is not going to be the last time. I love North Carolina, but probably I’m going to do another state. I have to think — in the future move for my children to be safe.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Laura Barron-Lopez in Asheville, North Carolina.