Mountain towns in North Carolina have been “forever changed” and cut off from the world by the wrath of Hurricane Helene – with residents describing the destruction as “absolutely overwhelming”.

“Chimney Rock is just destroyed, it’s changed forever,” said 59-year-old Brett Johnson, a resident of the small tourist town about an hour southeast of Asheville.

“There were beautiful houses everywhere here, now it’s just dirt and stones,” he told the Post. “Where this bank was supposed to be, there was a brewery, Mexican restaurants, hotels — they’re all just gone.”

Instead of being swamped by tourists, Chimney Rock has spent the days since Hurricane Helene working with police officers, cleanup crews and engineers from the North Carolina Department of Transportation to map the damage caused by the storm, which killed at least 232 people in the Southeast.

“On a beautiful day like this, this place would be full of tourists – full, full – but we are the only ones here. “All of our neighbors are gone,” Johnson said.

And the few who remain, like Johnson and his wife, refer to themselves as “the only survivors.”

“There were a few residents there cleaning up their spots and collecting what they could, but they looked like they were still traumatized,” said 53-year-old Teddy Cooper, who lives down the street in Lake Lure.

“Even though it had been a week, they still looked shocked.”

“Chimney Rock is completely destroyed,” Cooper said. “Almost everything is gone. The land isn’t even there anymore.”

“It’s crazy, it’s incredible, it’s crazy… This is a happy city, this is where people come to have fun. Everyone is used to seeing everyone happy, not this destruction and devastation.”

Helene’s path of destruction

• Helene hit the coast of Big Bend, Florida, on Thursday evening as a Category 4 hurricane, lashing the state with gusts of 155 miles per hour and killing at least 13 people.
• Helene moved northeast into Georgia, where it was downgraded to a tropical storm Friday morning, but winds and flooding claimed 25 lives in the state.
• By Friday afternoon, Helene had moved across parts of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, where at least 29 people had died.
• Relentless rain inundated the Appalachian Mountains Friday evening, sending floods and mudslides through mountain towns.
• In North Carolina, at least 35 people died in the Asheville area and a tornado injured 15 in Rocky Mount.
• Over the weekend, rescuers struggled to clear streets and recover bodies. The death toll is 192 and rising.

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Chimney Rock is just one of numerous small Appalachian towns devastated by Hurricane Helene and remains largely cut off from the outside world due to washed-out roads and ongoing power outages.

Like many of these mountain towns, Chimney Rock was hit by historic floods that devastated the region. As Helene blew through – bringing rain every thousand years – the local Broad River swelled to ten times its previous size, swallowing parts of the city as its banks expanded.

“You could see houses just falling into the water one by one. They fell like dominoes, and when they hit the water they were just ground up and chewed into nothing,” said Johnson, who rode out the storm on the valley wall in the nearby community of Bat Cave.

But even far above the river, few were spared. Rains pouring over the mountainsides caused mudslides and ripped off the foundations of homes or caused trees to fall through roofs – both of which caused severe damage to Johnson’s home.

“The storm was just angry,” Johnson said. “Where we live, in the middle of the mountains, it must have been a tornado because all the monster trees are just twisted.”

Local communities are barely able to reach each other. Just a few days ago, Bat Cave and Chimney Rock were connected by a 2.4 mile road – now only about 300 yards of that stretch remains intact. Lake Lure and Chimney Rock were completely cut off, and police prevented people from using the now dangerous path.

“For three or four days, helicopters have been constantly flying up and down the canyon looking for bodies,” Johnson said. “All of our food spoils rapidly.”

Aside from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in which over 1,000 people died when New Orleans’ levees burst, Helene has become the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States in nearly half a century.

The death toll is expected to rise as emergency crews continue to search the rubble for hundreds of missing people and communities grapple with ongoing power outages and contaminated water supplies.

Once the Johnsons repair the foundation of their home and pull a 150-foot tree from the roof of their living room, they plan to live in an RV away from Bat Cave and Chimney Rock for the next year — and aren’t sure how long It will take time for that to happen Communities are able to rebuild even the most basic infrastructure.

“For at least another year there will be no more car travel on the road to our house,” Johnson said.