One section of I-40 will be closed until Sept 2025, that's not good news. Part of I-26 closed until March 2025.
The Dragon was being used to move supplies into NC as it was passable. Today 10/02 Tenn HP reported closed near mile marker 5 due to semis trying to use the Dragon and getting stuck.
My area (Toccoa) was lucky, eye passed over and not too much damage done, just a lot of water.
My heart breaks for all of those out in WNC/TN/SVA... That's a beautiful part of the country, and I have very fond memories of spending time in Asheville and deeper into the mountains. I've donated to Greg Biffle's charity setup for rescue efforts, but I wish I could do more...
In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :
In reply to VolvoHeretic :
My neck thanks you
In reply to golfduke :
If you are so moved, these are friends of mine who live in an area that has lost road access, and many houses totally destroyed. They are currently being supplied by healthy dudes hiking in supplies. Luckily they are skilled at filtering water so they don't need much of that, but the big food drop was 50 cans in 2 whitewater kayaks...
This isn't some scam donation, these people need a vehicle to access their community. Conversly, I'm happy to trailer in a UTV or SxS if anyone would donate one from between the Savannah-Raleigh area.
Videos from a friend of mine there (who used to live in Charleston) who lost everything
In reply to bbbbRASS :
Done and donated! I'll also share it to my socials.
bbbbRASS said:In reply to golfduke :
If you are so moved, these are friends of mine who live in an area that has lost road access, and many houses totally destroyed. They are currently being supplied by healthy dudes hiking in supplies. Luckily they are skilled at filtering water so they don't need much of that, but the big food drop was 50 cans in 2 whitewater kayaks...
This isn't some scam donation, these people need a vehicle to access their community. Conversly, I'm happy to trailer in a UTV or SxS if anyone would donate one from between the Savannah-Raleigh area.
Videos from a friend of mine there (who used to live in Charleston) who lost everything
Thanks boss. I donated.
In reply to golfduke :
Appreciated guys!
Damn, that's disappointing. Wonder if there is more to the story though.
In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Thanks, I don't know why they were rotated when I uploaded them.
AMiataCalledSteve said:In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Thanks, I don't know why they were rotated when I uploaded them.
We had a new forum update go through and they are working out the kinks
Mr_Asa said:AMiataCalledSteve said:In reply to VolvoHeretic :
Thanks, I don't know why they were rotated when I uploaded them.
We had a new forum update go through and they are working out the kinks
When I was given this stupid iPhone smartphone by my son and with no instructions or lessons, I thought you held it like a camera with the two buttons you use to snap a picture on the top right and wondered why all of my photos where upside down after downloading them onto my computer. I finally figured it out after taking a whole bunch of movies for work and I had to download Movie Maker in order to rotate all of the movies 180 degrees.
Don't hold upside down like this:
Hold upside right like this:
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
Yeah. Overwhelmed fire guy is just seeing this guy as a liability if he crashed. He dosent know this guy.
I spent the last 4 days in Creston NC. I made the run to check in with my parents who weathered the storm on the farm we own up there. It's in the middle of nowhere about 30 minutes outside of West Jefferson and Boone. I was concerned because I hadn't been able to get in touch with my parents and thought the little creek on the property could have taken out the bridge leaving them stuck. It turns out they were fine but very happy to see me.
The little creek by the house went from a stream that was 2' across and 10" deep to a raging monster that was 60' across and 10' deep. My parents were at the main house and stayed until the water started covering the porch. At that point, they headed uphill to a small mobile home that is on the property. The water got to within a few inches of the windows and stopped there.
My father shot this video just before they abandoned ship and moved to higher ground.
Compared to the rest of the area, our property came through perfectly. The house had very little water in it considering it was surrounded by water for almost 24 hours. The approach to the bridge was washed out. My father had the foresight to park his truck on the other side of the bridge by the road so they had transportation. Cell service is down throughout the entire area. The power is out and probably will be for several more weeks. I was about halfway there when my father finally made it to town and called.The house has a standby generator that pulls from a 500-gallon propane tank. It's too small to run a stove or water heater, but it will run the lights and keep the refrigerator cold. I brought my camp stove and all the other comforts of camp to make life a little easier. My parents elected to stay there and finish up a few repairs before coming back to the coast.
Luckily, I had picked up my motorhome a couple of weeks ago and brought it back home. It would have been axle deep if it had still been there.
It sits here about 3 months a year.
At its highest point, most of that area was covered with flowing water. Probably not enough to damage the motorhome, but enough to cause me some stress. I'm glad it wasn't there.
The weather station at the house measured 18" of rain in 24 hours and over 23" of rain for the week. It has also been a wet year so the ground has been saturated. Saturated ground doesn't do a very good job of holding trees upright. 10%+- of the trees in the woods on the property were uprooted and are lying on the ground.
Saturated ground also doesn't stay on mountain slopes. Many of the roads throughout the area were or are blocked by mudslides. We had a mudslide up hill that I think created a temporary dam in one of the streams on the property. When the flow of water broke the dam it came down hill bringing mud and rock with it. One of the hay fields is now covered by 4-5 tons of rock and slop. Some rocks are as large as a person's head. The old timer that lives across the road said it was the craziest thing he had ever seen. The flow may have also permanently redirected the little creek to the middle of the field.
Our situation is golden compared to many people in the area. Just a little mess to clean up. It's not our primary home so even if it had been destroyed, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. We would have rebuilt or not and carried on.
Others weren't so lucky.
The North Fork of the New River that runs through the area went from 30' across and 2' deep to a force of nature that was 100s of feet across and upwards of 50' deep in places. The flood went through the area like a Juggernaut. The devastation is unbelievable in its scale. I've been through several hurricanes. I've been through torrential rains that lasted for days and caused widespread flooding. By far the worst place to have a hurricane or flood is the mountains. Flooding on the coast is usually a slow thing that you have plenty of time to get away from. In the mountains, flooding can happen in seconds. It strips the earth to bedrock and then peals those rocks up and casts them down the mountains at unbelievable speeds.
How do you prepare for that other than leave every time it rains hard?
The sheer amount of water is enormous. A normally placid and picturesque river turned into an angry and voracious monster eating everything in its path.
This is Sharp's Falls Hydro dam on the North Fork of the New River. It's a little under 25' tall and 150' across.
This is during the flood.
The damn survived. The power house is a wreck. Any lesser structure caught in the path is gone.
Houses shattered, cars upside down and hanging in trees. The local trash convenience center is gone. The 50 dumpsters and their contents are smashed and scattered for 10 miles downstream. Roads gone, either slid down the mountain, buried, or washed away. Bridges that were 20 feet or more above the river bed literally buried under piles of trees, assuming the bridge is still there at all. Lumber cast along the banks and in piles that you know were someone's house because of the furniture and clothes that are in the same pile. People with all the contents of their homes spread across the yard in a desperate attempt to dry out their lives. Seeing people divvy up their worldly belongings into a keep and trash pile. Watching people wander up and down the river bank looking for pieces of their shattered lives is enough to make a grown man cry.
I didn't ride around taking pictures of the misery people are experiencing. More than enough people are doing that already. Disaster tourism is apparently a thing.
The mountain people are a hardy people. We didn't buy property in a tourist or wealthy area. My father is at heart a farm boy so we bought an old farm up in a holler surrounded by hillbillies and locals. People who have lived there all their lives. Almost everyone on the road is related. Price, Mahala, and Rouark are their family names. There is a Price family cemetery on the mountain behind our house. I didn't have to worry about my parents during the storm because I knew the people around them were already keeping an eye on them. Those men meant I didn't have to worry about clearing a road or mudslide, because they had already done that job. They were checking on my parents as soon as the bridge was clear enough to cross. They are always ready to jump in and help when needed. They are accepting, even though we are intruders and city folk from "off". No sooner did they finish clearing our road, than they were gone with their tractors, 4-wheelers, and chainsaws to the next valley to check on them. They are good people. Even great.
Keep these people in your thoughts and prayers. While devastation around us was limited and I was able to jump in my truck and drive back to my home, many of the people in these areas don't have a car to jump in, a home to go back to, or the financial wherewithal to replace them.
I forget if it was video news or a written article, but I saw indications that they are at or beyond saturation for "boots on the ground" help for now and its more about supplies and money needed.
I would venture to guess that they are getting into figuring out sustained operations and how to start piecing communities back together. I can't imagine how long even just the infrastructure repair is going to take.
In reply to Apexcarver :
The Creston Volunteer Fire Department has asked that supplies be taken to staging areas in town. Keeping up with the stuff is taking more staff and space than they have. I passed them on the way out of town yesterday and there were 50 cars lined up to drop off stuff. There are only 855 people in the community. They don't need tons of water and canned food.
The amount of traffic is also higher than normal. These are all crooked two-lane roads that in many instances have been reduced to reasonably dangerous one-lane roads due to trees, mudslides, and washouts. Add to that the fact that all of the services and power lines run down these same roads which means utility trucks are often blocking them.
There are a bunch of people who seemingly have come to town to sightsee. Unless you have a set destination or family and friends that need help, I'd stay out of the area. Misery may love company, but it doesn't need to be stared at.
Thanks for the update Toyman, and happy that your family and property came through mostly unscathed.
Toyman. Glad your family is ok. Really bad damage there. Your pictures are shocking.
In reply to Toyman! :
Yes, glad your family is safe. I was thinking that there must be gold in them darn hills and all of that water would have dug it up and redeposited it behind any large obstacle so I looked it up. According to the USGS, there was a gold rush in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the early 1800's but it looks like Creston, NC is slightly north of the hot spot. Time to get a gold panning set up.
HowToFindGoldNuggets.com: America’s First Gold Rush to the Southern Appalachian Mountains
pubs.usgs.gov: Gold deposits of the southern Piedmont
Here are a bunch of new photos of the destruction of Chimney Rock, NC.
I'll have to go back read more comments, but I'm in NW SC and we just got power back last night. We lost some food and dealt with trying to find gas and ice. But what the folks in WNC and ETN are suffering is incredible. It will be months before they get close to normal. They had 24" of rain from Helene that came right after they got 7-11' from another storm. I have been to many of these locations over the years and I am just numb.
these closures are going to be insane
The New York Times just posted a reel featuring a flood victim in North Carolina.
Notice the sister’s car–as well as the logo on the back of her T-shirt.
Our people.
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