'Take action now': Inside the race to alert residents of Helene's wrath
As Helene's destructive wrath descended on the Southeast, some residents say they never got the warnings they needed to take action.
www.usatoday.com
Not to blame anyone. Clay Cheney and the other people tracking the storm were watching something "unprecedented." Will we see more of this? I just cannot get over what the terror must have been like, and the survivors may not think themselves lucky
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Tropical Storm Helene
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'Take action now': Inside the race to alert residents of Helene's wrath
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Rick JervisChris KenningDaniel Dassow
USA TODAY
ASHEVILLE, N.C. − If she had known the rivers would swallow whole towns and neighbors would be swept away, Lindsey Miller would have better prepared – or left her home altogether.
Her home near Boone, North Carolina, survived, but there was no power, cell service or water. Some neighbors filled buckets from a nearby river to flush toilets and washed children with bottled water.
Miller recalled hearing the ping of emergency phone warnings early on the morning of Sept. 27, just hours before the water rushed in. By then it was too late.
“We knew there was a storm coming, but we didn’t know it was going to be quite like that,” she said. “We really weren’t prepared at all.”
As rescue teams combed rivers and towns for victims or survivors of the massive floods triggered by remnants of Hurricane Helene, communities grappled with the scope of devastation from the storm that caught many by surprise. The death toll across the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia as of Thursday afternoon was at 200 and expected to climb. In Buncombe County, North Carolina, the epicenter of the devastation that includes Asheville, authorities have counted at least 72 dead.
Interviews with residents, experts, meteorologists and local officials paint a picture of a storm rapidly intensifying, barreling farther inland than usual with stunning ferocity. Authorities are just beginning the process of scrutinizing the alert systems that warned some but not all residents of the incoming catastrophic floods, and how systems could improve.
The historic disaster presented unique challenges for emergency officials trying to evacuate and safeguard residents in a mountainous region assailed by multiple floods and tropical-storm winds. Residents from Tennessee to North Carolina complained they weren’t given enough warning – or any warning at all – of the floodwaters that overtook their homes and the dams nearing their breaking points.
“There was no warning,” said Sunday Greer, a high school counselor at Sullivan East High School in Bluff City, Tennessee. “Basically, we did not receive anything officially.”
The emergency planning and response to the floods, from forecasts to evacuations, will be studied in the weeks and months ahead, said Russ Strickland, Maryland’s emergency management director and president of the National Emergency Management Association.
“This one came with greater strength than they anticipated,” he said. “Before it’s all over, there will be some very serious conversations with NOAA, the forecast office of NHC, state officials. Did they miss something? Was there an indication?”
Dire early warnings
As Helene gathered strength in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Buncombe County officials began taking phone calls from meteorologists as they tracked the storm's path and intensity.Helene was several days away from making landfall near Florida’s Big Bend. But a cold front had recently swept through western North Carolina, unleashing storms and dumping more than 6 inches of rain in the mountainous region, swelling streams and saturating the ground. Helene was a large, strong, fast-moving storm – heading right at them and promising to dump more water.
Related:Maps track Hurricane Helene's 800-mile path of destruction across southeastern US
The threat looked so dire that by Wednesday, Sept. 26, Buncombe County officials declared a local state of emergency for low-lying areas, such as Asheville and Montreat, the county’s director of communication, Lillian Govus, told USA TODAY.
Later that day, they stood up an Emergency Operations Center in the county emergency services building just north of Asheville. County manager Avril Pinder, Assistant Emergency Services Director Ryan Cole and law enforcement and fire officials, among others, gathered to digest the data and forecasts and decide what to do with all of it.
“CATASTROPHIC FLASH FLOODING POSSIBLE,” warned a post on the Buncombe County Facebook site that day, repeating the warning in Spanish for its nearly 22,000 Latino residents.
No evacuations were ordered.
‘This is really about to get bad’
Around the same time, Clay Chaney, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Forecast Office in Greer, South Carolina, settled into his workspace and began tracking Helene’s activity in the Gulf. Responsible for upstate South Carolina, western North Carolina and parts of Georgia, Chaney sensed mountain flooding would be the biggest threat to his region.He was all too aware of the thunderstorms raking the region. Known as “predecessor events,” the storm created dangerous conditions for Helene’s path. A hydrologist in his office mulled over river gauge readings and other data to forecast flood threats.
By Tuesday, Sept. 24, Chaney and others began holding daily webinars, hourlong virtual chats with local and state emergency management officials in his region, including Buncombe County. At 3:30 p.m., more than 230 people dialed in, as Chaney talked through a series of slides showing Helene’s path, wind speed and the potential of severe flooding as it reached the Appalachian range.
Low-lying areas needed to be ready for “worst-case scenarios,” he told those on the call. Chaney patiently answered questions as the webinar stretched to nearly an hour.
The next morning, Wednesday, Sept. 25, Chaney reached his office and his heart sank – the rainfall totals from the earlier thunderstorms were as high as feared, up to 9 inches in some places. Fresh rains could create historic floods, he and others predicted. That day, rain from Helene’s outer bands began dropping in the region.
“We were like, ‘Oh crap, this is really about to get bad,” he said.
Rivers rise to historic highs
At the Sept. 25 webinar with emergency officials, Chaney stepped up the rhetoric, comparing the upcoming floods to those of the “Great Flood of 1916,” a deluge that overran towns, killed at least 80 people in Buncombe County and destroyed homes, factories and railroads.His office also released posts on social media sites with dire predictions.
“URGENT MESSAGE,” it began. “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era. Record flooding is forecasted and has been compared to the floods of 1916 in the Asheville area.”
'Take action now': Inside the race to alert residents of Helene's wrath
As Helene's destructive wrath descended on the Southeast, some residents say they never got the warnings they needed to take action.
www.usatoday.com
