Helene hit Florida's Gulf Coast last week

NC is in the mix this year, if I was Kamala I would be making an ad about this as soon as possible. Tie it in with her "I don't ask if you are dem or pub" line that she has been using, and show how Trump ignored NC, how he lied about Biden's support of GA, and how he threatened CA.

I know MAGA thinks folks like me have TDS because I really really hate that freak. But it is for reasons like the one above, and dozens of other actions or inactions (J6, covid, Ukraine, classified docs, etc.) that he has earned that hate.

 

Being here, the update we got yesterday was that:

• Massive response has been organized
• National Guard is on the ground
• Over 100 Rescues have occurred.
• Brought in over 30,000 pounds of food water and medicine
• Heavy lift aircraft from 7 different states are running those missions
• Asheville airport has reopened but only for supply deliveries and equipment, not commercial
• Dozens of search and rescue teams are on the ground which is 700 people just focused on search and rescue
• Water is a top priority, treatment centers are in need of repair
• Thousands of line men are on the ground from around the country and Canada
• Power outages now affects 400,000 down from 1 Million 2 days ago
• All hospitals are open and running, some on back up power
• 1,600 NCDOT workers are clearing roads and providing access where none is today
• Cell coverage is bad but emergency mobile towers are deployed to 10 counties hit hard
• Cell carries activated disaster roaming allowing all to make calls on any carrier
• Disaster recovery funds approved

If you want to donate go to:

Make a NC Hurricane Donations Payment - Powered by PayIt

 

Also, this morning I saw about 20 Mobile Hospitals (they look like blood drive trailers) headed out of Charlotte in a caravan going somewhere.

 

Got back to Florida at 1:00 a.m. from Asheville. We lasted as !long as we could without power. We didn't know the full scale of the destruction until we got back and saw footage, but what we did see was horrific, liteeally. We have over an acre full of frees, including several 125+ year old oaks. Not a bit of damage! I'd thank god, but that would be a bit tone deaf, eh? Life's an unplanned crap shoot, and we just got lucky. We almost feel guilty for how the dice fell on our property.

 

less than 1% of the homes in the county where Asheville is have flood insurance.

not good..lot of uninsured people

 

Probably hard for people in Western Carolina in the mountains to envision flooding problems.

 

I think the city of Ashville will be fine relatively quickly, it’s the more rural areas id wonder about.

But this video show utility workers already out there in some pretty rural areas, so at least some towns can get their main roads reconnected as a starting point (maybe that can be done in weeks). With such widespread damage and losses of small bridges and utilities, makes you wonder if it might be many months before basic utilities are back in some places.

 

Looking at past stories, they do seem to get hit by flooding and tropical remnants occasionally. Some of the structures near mountain rivers or in low spots were a ticking time bomb not unlike some structures on barrier islands or low lying areas on the gulf coast.

This storm smashed all kinds of flood records, so even some more moderate risk properties probably got involved in the flooding or mudslides. Falling trees can of course happen anywhere.

 

How much rain was anticipated? Did anyone prepare for that amount of flooding? Seems like nobody prepared for anything

 

I was watching the weather up there and didn’t get the impression it would be serious until the day before. So basically Wednesday, that gave people maybe 24-48 hours.

I think the problem is the path of the storm shifted a bit AND a front stalled out and dropped quite a bit of rain before Helene even got there. Those two days of advance rains are what turned it from the type of flooding they’d seen before to a 1 in 1000 year event. Theoretically even if people evacuated where would they go? People worried about mountain roads washing out would probably be going to Asheville or Boone, if they were inclined to evacuate at all.

 

I saw an interview with a guy who built his cabin/house on 12 foot stilts and it was unharmed by the storm. His friends and neighbors had scoffed at his idea to do so because of the unlikeliness of needing it.

 

1 in 100 yar. same thing happened in 1916. heavy rains filled all the ponds and then they got hit with a hurricane.

people were asleep at the switch and didn't release that water that had built up, assuming they had the mechanisms to do so.

that and apparently nobody studied what happened in 1916 and made that the 100 year design event that the interstate should be built to. as a civil engineer, one builds to the design event for the particular improvement. An interstate should be built to the 100 year event. why the stages and volumes estimated from that storm wasn't the design event for the 100 year storm I do not understand.

but for climate change deniers, this is going to start happening more often., the energy from a warmer gulf is moving further inland. what if this becomes the 10 or 20 year event?

 

you don't need it, until you do. once every 100 years +/- apparently

 

you don't. you have a plan well in advance. in SW FLorida, we drop all weirs and drain the canals downa s far as they can get them to create storage volumes. In the hills, one should release the reservoirs and let them discharge at high volumes prior to the storm arriving. create storage volumes to help absorb the impact and get peoples attention to take it seriously. I have no idea how the reservoirs are managed or by whom up there but it sounds like they didn't do much other than thoughts and prayers.

 

I just found out today that the couple that owns the gym where I run my business out of for the past 15 yrs had their mtn house heavily damaged in Eagles Nest, NC. it got flooded and a tree fell through it. It was 95% complete after taking 2 yrs to get it built. It took Jeff(owner) 2 days to just get there to see the damage because of how bad the area was.

 

it really sounds like someone, or multiple someone's, were asleep at the switch or their operating protocols and design events need serious reevaluation

 

There are two large reservoirs near me in far west NC managed by TVA. They were at very low levels due to normal fall/winter drawdowns and recent drought. We have a river running through our development but experienced no flooding - likely because they were able to retain a lot of rainfall runoff in the lakes.