As the country turns its attention to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to bring life-threatening conditions to parts of Florida after it makes landfall later this week, communities in much of the south-east US are still reeling from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene almost two weeks ago.
In western North Carolina, home to many mountain communities such as Green Mountain, entire towns were destroyed and washed away during the storm. Residents became isolated as roads became impassable. Electricity and cellphone service went out.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene has soared to more than 225 people, with deaths recorded across six states and officials warning that the number will likely rise as recovery efforts continue.
North Carolina was one of the hardest-hit states, accounting for more than half of the total number of deaths caused by the hurricane. Search-and-rescue missions there remain ongoing, and more than 100,000 people in the area remain without power as of Tuesday.
Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on 26 September as a category 4 hurricane, became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005. Helene brought strong winds, rainfall, storm surge and devastating flooding to the south-eastern region of the US.
This week, many residents remain displaced with no homes to return to, while others are waiting to hear any news about their missing loved ones. Some have received the news they most feared.
On Monday, rescue crews in parts of North Carolina continued to search for the many people still unaccounted for since the hurricane hit the region.
Alison Wisely, with her two children, Felix, 9, and Lucas, 7, and her fiancé Knox Petrucci tried to evacuate from their home in Green Mountain on Friday, 27 September.
They expected some flooding, but not what unfolded. After a failed attempt at driving away from their home resulted in the family having to return home by foot, an eyewitness saw the group of four get swept away by a wave into the Toe River.
Search teams, family and friends looked tirelessly for the family. The bodies of Alison, Felix and Lucas were recovered last week. On Monday, family members were notified that Knox’s body had been found.
“This unspeakable tragedy has broken our hearts into a million pieces,” family and friends said in a statement.
Alison and Knox were to be married in a small ceremony on 9 November, the family said. Now, on that date, the family plan to gather to mourn their passing.
“We are heartbroken,” the family said in a statement posted to a GoFundMe page set up to help raise money to cover the costs of the burials and memorial, as well as to support grieving family members.
In a statement, the surviving relatives said that the family had created a life full of “love, family, creativity, bees, chickens, cats, dogs” in the North Carolina mountains next to the North Toe River.
Knox was a local beekeeper, aspiring blacksmith and gifted musician, while Alison, a sanctuary operations manager at Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, has been described as the “most loving mother” who “encouraged her children to stretch their imaginations and nurtured their creative, loving, funny spirits”.
Nine-year-old Felix “wanted to know everything about the world”, his family said, and seven-year-old Lucas loved the outdoors and had an “incredible imagination”.
Knox’s sister, Briana Petrucci Yarbrough, told the Guardian that Knox “embraced being part of the Appalachian beekeeping, arts and queer communities”. He’d told her about “the neighborliness of the people of Burnsville and Green Mountain,” and how even though “people came from many sides of the political spectrum, if someone needed help their neighbor would come through.”
Petrucci Yarbrough added: “He built a beautiful life with a central focus on family and friends who were like family.”
Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, announced over the weekend that air search-and-rescue teams in the state flew 48 missions on Saturday and located 39 survivors in western North Carolina who had been stranded.
“So far 6,586 people and counting have been rescued, evacuated or assisted by search and rescue teams since the storm hit,” the announcement reads.
Authorities in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the worst-hit areas, said on Monday that they had recovered an additional nine people who had been declared dead, and had located about 85% of those missing, according to CNN.
So far, more than $27m in Fema Individual Assistance funds have been paid to western North Carolina disaster survivors, and more than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, the governor’s office said on Saturday.
Nearly 1,400 people are being housed in hotels through Fema’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance, officials said. More than 755 Fema personnel are on the ground assisting in the western North Carolina relief effort, and more than 1,100 responders from 34 states are also supporting the response and recovery efforts.
The White House ordered an additional 500 active-duty troops to be sent to North Carolina, to aid the recovery efforts on Sunday. The additional troops will supplement the nearly 1,000 soldiers already on the ground.
The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced a day earlier that North Carolina will receive $100m in emergency relief funds to help pay for repairs in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
In an effort to stave off more devastation and loss of life, residents in Tampa, Florida, are being warned to evacuate before Milton makes landfall in Tampa Bay on Wednesday, as it is projected to do.
“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” said the Tampa mayor, Jane Castor, on Tuesday, adding that Hurricane Milton is expected to be “literally catastrophic” and push up to 15ft of Gulf water inland – an amount that officials say is deadly.