Hi all, figure I’d stop in to update!
First and most important - to my knowledge, I am aware of no other players here in the impacted areas of Western NC. There easily could be of course, but just being in the community so long and knowing a lot of locations, nobody else in the hard hit places.
I can tell you, whatever you’re seeing on TV or online, it’s worse. Can’t over emphasize how bad it is and how long this area will be hurting from it. It is a heavily tourism based economy. A HUGE area was impacted. Whole towns were lost. Communities are cutoff as roads got wiped out. Search and rescue still actively underway as places are reached. Almost nobody in Southern Appalachia has flood insurance (we are one of the rare exceptions) and anybody who lost their home to a landslide, nobody covers that.
My area was comparatively spared. But living on a river, our house did flood a bit. Had we been in the worst areas, it would be gone. Got a mess to clean up (made a lot of progress already), got up to a few inches of water in about 3/4 the house, looks structurally ok so far but one and maybe two floors will need to be replaced. Luckily we do have flood insurance. We and our cats ok, we’ll be ok but I’m mentally a wreck.
On top of everything else, we had someone wreck their van in our driveway, damaging it. Got it fixed already, but it was a huge shock, we couldn’t get close enough before the waters receded to inspect, but they were rescued. They got lucky to hit our driveway hard and wedge in, water got deeper after that. Drove head on into raging flood waters, never would have made it. Happens every flood (road is flood prone) that people do that, seriously people - do not ever drive through water of unknown depth. And particularly if it is alongside a river!
We’re in a comparatively fortunate situation, we don’t need anything, and are hiring cash strapped people we know to help us out. But I can say that anybody who wants to contribute to this area, it is badly needed. And will be needed for a long time.
