Blaze Media national correspondent Julio Rosas joined Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) in North Carolina this week to assess the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and distribute supplies to those in need in small communities outside Asheville.
Aerial footage showed destroyed buildings, fallen trees, washed-out roads, and severe flooding in some areas.
‘These people have taken a serious hit.’
On the ground, Blaze News spoke with individuals at Broad River Fire & Rescue.
“Probably about two inches of water in here,” one individual on the fire rescue team told Rosas, referring to inside the fire station. “And in two minutes, it was to my knees. And I looked outside, and it was chest-deep.”
The man explained that as the water rose, he retreated up the stairs to the second floor of the fire station. “The doors buckled, and the water came through,” he explained.
The rush of water moved a pickup parked at the front of the department halfway down the building, the emergency responder explained. He stated that one of the fire trucks was totaled by the flood.
“It was unbelievable,” he continued. “I’ve been here my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like it. My grandmother talked about the 1916 flood, and from what she told me, this is on the order of that.”
Another individual on the fire rescue team stated that there was nearly six feet of water in the fire department bay.
“You can see the water mark on the wall,” he remarked.
When asked what he would like Americans to know about what is going on in the area, he told Rosas, “Just communities planning together, helping each other. Families helping families.”
“These smaller communities, a lot of the families will band together. They share their food, their water,” he added.
Another volunteer, Mike Cannon, who has 40 years of rescue experience, told Rosas that he arrived on Sunday morning.
“Words can’t describe it,” he stated. “This is the worst one I’ve been to. We’ve been to Harvey and Hurricane Florence, Tropical Storm Irene in Vermont. And those are our benchmarks, but I’ve never seen devastation like there is here in North Carolina.”
“They’ve got a lot of resources both in state and out of state and federal,” Cannon said. “But I guess my thought process on this is that there are lots of areas that are completely cut off that are gonna take a long time for help to get into them. And the power grid does not look good around here. I would imagine that that’s going to take some time to repair and these people are going to need a lot of help.”
“I know they’re probably resilient, like a lot of people are, but these people have taken a serious hit here in their personal lives and their property,” he added.
He noted that the landslides in the area were like none he had ever seen before.
“Just a recon flight in this one fire district that we’re in, I counted over 125 landslides yesterday and I stopped counting,” Cannon said.
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