Hurricane Helene’s 600 Miles of Destruction
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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. ♪

We start with the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The storm carved a path of destruction through Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee. Over the past few days, Hurricane Helene left a trail of devastation across 600 miles. You know, when Helene hit, it really didn't matter if your home was up on pilings or stilts because those homes are gone.

killing more than 100 people, driving thousands from their homes, and leaving millions without power. There's just no prepping for this kind of storm. There's no amount of sandbags that could have been put out. But by far the worst damage occurred where it was least expected, far inland in the mountains of western North Carolina.

It's just a horrible situation and a horrible storm that took a lot from a lot of people. Today, my colleagues, meteorologist Judson Jones and national reporter Nicholas Bogle Burroughs, on the storm and its toll. It's Tuesday, October 1st.

Judd, I want to just start by asking you your overall reaction to what this hurricane has done. You know, I expected it to be a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Like, the models were apparent. It made landfall right where we expected it to make landfall. What wasn't apparent days ahead of time was the amount of rainfall that was going to fall in North Carolina. I think the devastation in North Carolina is how this storm is going to be remembered.

Well, let's talk about how Hurricane Helene gets to North Carolina and becomes so catastrophic there over the weekend. I mean, last week, we were already monitoring Helene. Full crew here. We're taking off today.

I actually went up with a Hurricane Hunter aircraft and we flew into the storm of Helene with a group of scientists trying to locate the center of the storm. I think it might be to our north. We might have to see the A.A.

Wait, just you went up into Hurricane Helene yourself in a plane? Yeah, I was with the hurricane hunters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They fly into the heart of the storm to try to get a grasp of how strong the storm is. They went on their mission Tuesday afternoon and I went with them. And for eight hours in the Caribbean Sea, we flew what's called a butterfly pattern in and out of the center of the storm.

We were dropping devices into the center of the storm to try to figure out just how strong it was. Wow. When you're riding in one of these planes...

You're all of a sudden dropping like a thousand feet, you know, in a second and then climbing back up and you're making bank turns. They do give you sick bags. And I will say I used mine. You threw up during the fight? Oh, absolutely. Like it was, think of the worst turbulence you've ever experienced on a plane and then maybe magnified a little bit.

But, you know, the most important thing with that flight is as it was late afternoon, you could see the ocean up ahead of the storm and you could already see the white caps. Can you just explain that, what that means to you to see those whirling white caps?

You're used to seeing whitecaps at the beach coming ashore, and that has to do with the land interaction, right? Right. But you're out in the ocean, it's because of the wind. And the wind was becoming so strong that you were starting to see these whitecaps out over the Caribbean Sea. It was this indication amongst the people on this plane that this was likely going to be an intense storm just based off of the appearance of the ocean. Right.

On Wednesday, it became a hurricane. And then what we saw on Thursday was then it got over these really warm ocean waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When it got over the absurdly warm ocean temperatures, kind of near bathtub-like temperatures,

this storm was able to fuel itself and get the energy it needed to rapidly intensify. And the Gulf of Mexico has never been warmer than it was as the storm came across it. Right. And as you've told us many times, if water is the fuel for a hurricane, warm water is like the supercharged premium jet fuel of fuel for a hurricane. Yeah. I mean, that's how a storm jumps across.

from a Category 1 to a Category 4 hurricane within 16 hours. Which this one did. Which this one did. And it was moving so fast, it didn't really have a chance to ever weaken. So I landed in Perry, Florida, where it made landfall. And as it came ashore, we experienced gusts of 99 miles per hour.

Wow. Wow.

But what kind of spared Perry where I was as these winds were coming ashore was the fact that the eye was so large. So we were in the most intense winds that northeast part of the eyewall for only 20 to 30 minutes. And then all of a sudden it went calm and you could hear crickets and frogs just got still and it just got quiet. And how long did that last until...

the backside of the eye came. I mean, we were in the eye. It's hard to judge the time, but it felt like 20 to 40 minutes. But it almost felt longer in the eye than it did in the strongest winds. Wow. That tells you just how big this was. Yeah. I mean, it was a ginormous eye. But the reason this eye was so large was because the storm was so large. The storm was being compared to the size of Katrina.

It took up the whole entire eastern Gulf of Mexico. The other issue was it wasn't just Florida. It was stretching into South Carolina and North Carolina as it was making landfall. And then it moved so swiftly, it was already in Atlanta by Friday morning. But I followed the storm back towards Atlanta to my neighborhood that was also flooded that morning.

So you would have understood that this was merely a foretaste of what was to come.

in places like North Carolina. Yeah. You know, North Carolina was already struggling. And that's because of what's called a predecessor rainfall event. Can you explain that? It's just a fancy word for saying rain that is correlated with the storm happening before the storm gets there. What happens is there's another weather pattern that was happening across the central U.S.,

That weather pattern connected with the hurricane was allowed to funnel warm, tropical, moist air from the Caribbean Sea all the way up into the mountains of the Appalachians. And that moisture, when it hits the mountains, it just is forced to rise and then fall back down as rain. The highest rainfall total from Wednesday to Saturday was 30 inches. 30 inches falling on a mountain is...

creates a calamity. Right. Two and a half feet of rain doesn't get absorbed into the system. No, especially when it's been persistent. But Helene brought so much rain to the mountains in a place that just can't take that much rain. Right. The other issue is one of the strongest wind gusts was actually in the mountains. And so you have the wet soil

And then you have these strong winds and the trees come down. This also sounds like a recipe for a mudslide. Absolutely. And so the Weather Prediction Center put out a high risk. It's the highest level you could put out for flooding. But how do you prepare? It's one of those, you can know all of this. You know, we've seen it again and again for flooding. You don't really know until you see the river rising.

And that's what the real struggle is. It's hard for people to visualize something that's normally calm and tranquil to be a raging river. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. After the break, what Hurricane Helene did to North Carolina. We'll be right back.

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By Saturday morning, a fuller picture emerged of just how much Hurricane Helene had devastated North Carolina. We have biblical devastation through the county. We've had biblical flooding here, and it has been extremely significant. Across the state's western edge,

Rising waters washed out roads, capsized buildings, and left thousands of residents without water, electricity, or a cell signal to call for help. Guys, just to give you an understanding of the devastation we're dealing with here, Chimney Rock's gone, Flowering Bridge is gone, and the fucking road's gone. So I don't know what they're going to do to get us out of here, but we've got to figure it out because this shit's crazy.

The water also swallowed large parts of the town of Suwananoa, leaving only the rooftops of buildings peeking out. With no way in or out, rescue workers resorted to flying in helicopters and dropping bags of food on top of a church and a Harley Davidson shop.

When the rain was finally over, the Swannanoa River, which spans all 22 miles of Buncombe County, had broken every modern record for flooding. It rose 19 feet in just 20 hours, peaking at more than 26 feet and submerging the city of Asheville.

New drone video shows just how bad the situation is in Asheville. The city is now isolated after roads leading there flooded and cell towers were knocked down. I want to pan over if we can to just see some of these limbs as well. Oh wow, look at that. That is a dumpster that is just being carried by the water. So powerful, powerful water there.

A video showed neighbors stunned as a perfectly intact beige house just floated by. Crashed into a tree, collapsed in on itself, and then disappeared under the water.

By the end of the weekend, local online message boards lit up with frantic posts from people looking for their neighbors and their loved ones. One of them read, Has anyone heard of or seen if the Lafer family is okay? Robin Lafer, her two sons, Jared and Brandon? I'm worried."

And then there's a post from a woman who says she's looking for her mother and her stepfather, who live along one of the flooded rivers in the North Carolina mountains. She concludes by saying, As of Monday night, according to local officials, more than 500 people are still missing in North Carolina.

My colleague, national correspondent Nicholas Bogle Burroughs, ended up reconstructing the story of what happened to one of those missing people. Nick, tell us about how you ended up in this town and how you discovered the story of what happened to this man. So we had been reporting on the devastating effects that the hurricane had on Asheville and Washington.

What we kept hearing from people and families is that there were so many people in more isolated towns as well that were completely off the grid, that could not reach the outside world, in some cases couldn't even get outside of where they were. And we started hearing about Marshall. It's a very small, beautiful town of about 800 along a big river, the French Broad River. We knew that it had been hit very hard by floodwaters, and so we weren't sure how close we would be able to get.

But the photographer and I decided to drive over there and talk to people about what their last few days had been like.

And I met with a husband and wife and their son who were pulling all of their belongings from a house in trash bags along this railroad. And one of the first things that they mentioned was this harrowing story down the street about a 75-year-old man who had clung to a tree for life as the floodwaters came in. Hmm.

down across the railroad so the photographer and i decided to walk down the railroad towards that house and try to figure out what had happened you know it's a it's a dead end road so everybody knows everybody yeah and they all some neighbors pointed out where he lived down on rollins road and we turned down this little driveway and see essentially the ruins of his home you see part of the debris debris right there right in those trees yep

And the people who live in that neighborhood tell us that the man who lived there was Bruce Tipton. He was always up and down the road in his little red pickup truck with his dog. Okay, yeah. Making sure everything was, you know, all right and everything. He just was a, just a quiet country guy. Yeah. And we start to learn about who he was and what happened on Friday night during this storm.

They said that Bruce was in his trailer. In his trailer, so if you can picture this, over where those trees are, it was on a... Essentially, Bruce Tipton had lived in this home for a long, long time, and he had decided to stay while other people were evacuating this area. Yes, and I waved at him, he waved at me, and I said, you know...

And one of the neighbors described feeling a little bit worried about him. And then essentially what happened is that the water rose and rose. The water from the river went down this road by his house, and it was essentially like his house was on its own island in this rushing river that was more violent and higher than anyone remembers it ever being before.

Bruce is standing in the doorway next to his porch, and his family, many of whom live in the area, are up on shore watching him just stand there as the water's rising. And they're, you know, all hoping that the water will stop rising and that he will be able to get out safely once it recedes. Instead, what happened is that

the trailer broke it was kind of like exploded yeah all of a sudden as he's standing in the doorway his home just completely crumples right and the river just broke it apart in pieces i mean you see it's just ripping its shreds did you see the entire home was destroyed and it happened so quick one minute he's standing in the front door and the next minute trailer's gone

His dog, his German shepherd that everyone knew him by, ran out and was able to get to shore and was rescued. But they thought that Bruce was gone. They thought that he had been swept down the river. And then, amazingly... Somebody after a while said, he's hollering. So we run up there and yelled across the river, Bruce! Yeah. 30 minutes later, an hour later, they hear him shout. Wow. And...

It turns out that he had somehow been swept towards a tree, maybe 40 feet away, and was clinging to life behind this tree near his home. It's so loud, all he could ever do was yell help. Yeah. And he was in that tree. They just heard him shout, help.

help again and again. And once they heard that, they all started shouting back. Me and at least five other men with loud voices, we were yelling, Bruce, we have your dog, you know, to encourage him to hold on or do whatever. I mean, they were trying to keep him talking. You know, they didn't know how injured he was or what condition he was in. They were trying to keep his spirits up as much as you can and give him hope that he would be rescued.

And that's essentially the communication that they had for the next six, seven hours. Wait, for six hours, this 75-year-old man is clinging to a tree in fast-moving water all around him?

Exactly. And it's hard to overestimate how strong this river was moving. It's a wide river. It's rushing down. And he's essentially in the river. He's in this tree that is being hit by the water constantly. And there's plywood and other debris that's flowing down. And it was very, very dangerous.

Nick, did any of these people attempt to wade out into the water and rescue Bruce, or was it just so evident that they themselves would be washed away if they did? So they absolutely kicked into high gear. One person said there might have been 25 or 30 people there, and they're all trying to figure out what they can do to help him. And one man is tying a—sorry, it's raining here—

One man is tying a cable around his waist and looking out to see if he thinks he could go out there. And he was started to take his shirt off and he said, I'm just get a rope on me. I'm going out there. Right. And I told him, Jay, I said, please don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He has kids and. Right. You know, but it was his uncle. So. Yeah.

They basically realized that this was no match for them and anyone who went into the water was sure to just be swept away before having a chance to get to Bruce. So they called for help. They called the fire department. There is one river rescue team in the entire county and it's all volunteers. And...

They brought rafts and they carried rafts down the bank from this road up here and they wouldn't put rafts in the water. They took a look at the situation and said that there was no way that they could go in safely. They didn't have a motor for their boat. It was too dark. Yeah. And when they told me they wouldn't put boats in the water, I lost it. Yeah. I flipped. Like, why did you bring them and race the resources and all that if you had no intentions of putting them in the water?

That really angered the family, but the chief of that rescue team has told me today that it was just impossible, that he felt like if they went in that water, they might lose basically the county's entire rescue team. Oh, my God. As they're trying to handle other operations. So what ends up happening to Bruce? One of Bruce's nieces who was there, Annie Meadows,

described what happened next. And he come out of the tree at 10:51 Friday night and he just kind of went limp and he just fell over and his head went first in the water. She says that she saw his body be swept away downriver towards the town. Yeah. I'm so sorry. Just knowing that you couldn't get to something, even if it wasn't him.

You're sitting there and you're hearing somebody hollering for help and nobody's offering to do anything. Like, I don't see leaving somebody to die, whether it's my family. I just don't see that. Like, my old man was the first one in the water. And part of what's so difficult, I mean, there's so many things that are devastating about this, but they don't even know, was he injured and did he pass away and then fall? Or did he just run out of energy and couldn't hang on anymore? They're left with so many questions.

And among them is the fact that his body has still not been recovered. They don't know where it is, where it could be. Bruce's sister asked her niece to check through the rubble near his home just in case his body was there, which she described as incredibly traumatic to do. But she knew he wasn't there because she saw him be swept down the river. Do they have any hope that he's still alive? No.

The relatives and neighbors that I talk to do not. They are sure of what they saw with their own eyes and how strong this river was, that if he was swept into it, that there's really no chance. I wonder if you're hearing other stories like this one in Marshall or really any of these towns that were so devastated by this hurricane. Are people angry? Are they in mourning? How would you describe what people are feeling there right now?

Absolutely. I mean, there are so many stories of loved ones missing in eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, across the states. And then there is also just the destruction of places that mean so much to people as well.

People have no idea what the rebuild is going to look like, if it's going to happen, what's going to come of this. They are trying to process losing a family member and also not even knowing if the town that they grew up in or have known their whole lives is going to be a town again or what that's going to look like. There's just an incredible amount of grief throughout the entire region right now. Well, Nick, thank you. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

On Monday, President Biden addressed the devastation in North Carolina from the White House and put special emphasis on those who are still unaccounted for.

Matter of fact, it's almost equally as bad missing not knowing whether or not your brother, sister, husband, wife, son, daughter are alive. Biden said he had dispatched thousands of federal aid workers to the region, but he warned that rebuilding would be a long and expensive process. The president is scheduled to travel to North Carolina and survey the damage for himself tomorrow. We'll be right back. ♪

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Hey, I'm Tracy Mumford. You can join me every weekday morning for the headlines from The New York Times. Now we're about to see a spectacle that we've never seen before. It's a show that catches you up on the biggest news stories of the day. I'm here in West Square. We'll put you on the ground where news is unfolding. I just got back from a trip out to the front line and every soldier... And bring you the analysis and expertise you can only get from the Times newsroom. I just can't emphasize enough how extraordinary this moment was.

Look for The Headlines wherever you get your podcasts. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday morning, Israel said that its troops had begun crossing into southern Lebanon, a major escalation in its efforts to debilitate Hezbollah.

Both Israel and the United States said that the invasion was a narrow operation consisting of small groups of Israeli commandos designed to remove Hezbollah sites that have threatened Israel's northern border over the past year. But the plan could still evolve into a larger and more prolonged invasion. Israel has carried out several waves of attacks against Hezbollah over the past few weeks,

including intense airstrikes that, according to local officials, have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon, including 95 people, on Monday alone. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison, Mary Wilson, Luke Vanderplug, Alex Stern, Rob Zipko, and Ricky Nowetzki, with help from Rochelle Bonjaugh.

It was edited by Lexi Diao, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landvirk of Wonder League. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow. ♪