No power. No food. And no functioning roads to safely leave the houses in which they are stranded.
These are the conditions some North Carolina residents are facing during the worst of the flooding caused by Tropical Depression Helene.
Jennifer Replogle, a pregnant mother of two young children, is “completely trapped” in her home above Boone in Tater Hill, North Carolina, at an elevation of 4,000 feet, where severe flooding from tropical storms is not the norm.
“We were not prepared for this,” she said via text message early Saturday morning. “The roads have disappeared, as if they have completely disappeared.”
She said the power has been out since early Friday. She is among 700,000 North Carolina residents without power Saturday morning, including 19,226 in Watauga County, where Tater Hill is located, according to poweroutage.us.
Replogle said she is out of food and running out of water.
The few narrow, winding roads from the mountain to Boone are impassable, she said.
“Our basement flooded yesterday. If they don't get someone to join us soon, I really don't know what to do,” Replogle said.
She is concerned about the plumbing and water company she and her husband own. They have seen a photo of the company's flooded parking lot and fear that “we have lost almost everything.”
Their employees are also cooped up at home or staying with friends, Replogle said.
Watauga County authorities have declared a curfew from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., according to a post on the county's emergency services Facebook page. The post cited “hazardous conditions,” “compromised roads” and “ongoing emergency operations.”
And the city of Boone issued a boil water advisory on Friday due to “multiple water breaks,” according to the city's Facebook page.
Helene first made landfall in Florida on Thursday evening as a Category 4 hurricane, destroying homes and buildings and knocking out power in the Southeast. The storm killed at least 59 people in five states.
Helene “is one of the worst storms in modern history for parts of North Carolina,” Gov. Roy Cooper said. More than 2 feet of rain fell in the state's mountainous region from Wednesday morning through Friday morning, while Busick, a small unincorporated area of Yancey County along the western border with Tennessee, recorded 29.58 inches in just 48 hours.
More than 400 roads remain closed in western North Carolina, the Department of Transportation said Saturday morning. “All roads in Western NC should be considered closed,” the post on X says.
The storm has exposed other North Carolina residents to life-or-death situations.
Sofia Grace Kunst, an 18-year-old who was on a mission trip in Black Mountain, told CNN that a landslide shattered a window and flowed into her dining room Friday morning.
“It wasn't just like it was trickling down… like it had momentum! It went! Maybe between five and a half feet,” Kunst said of the mud.
Kunst was playing the card game Uno with six of her friends in a small room in the dining hall when the landslide crashed through the window.
“You look back and you just see it pouring into the room and you think, oh my god, I was there two seconds ago,” Kunst told CNN.
She ran into the main room of the dining hall and saw that the wall had also completely collapsed.
Kunst and her friends eventually decided to trek through the floodwaters to reach a parking lot on higher ground where their vans were located. She was so scared for her life that she texted her parents, she said.
“I actually sent a text saying, 'Hey, so this storm isn't that fun anymore.' I love you,'” Kunst said. “Of course you can't regret anything when you're dead, but I would regret it if I didn't say anything.”
Eventually, Kunst and her friends were able to cross a body of water, holding on to a rope as they crossed from one end to the other. Art was still barefoot at that time.
'Pure chaos'
Asheville resident Matt Lewis described the “pure chaos” left in the wake of the storm.
He saw a semi-truck floating down the French Broad River on Friday, he told CNN, which he described as “pretty wild.”
Lewis said he has no power or cell service. He relies on radio as the only source for updates on the devastation.
He said he saw about 400 people in line when he went to the grocery store.
“They let them in, I think, probably 15 to 20 people at a time,” Lewis said.
Another North Carolina resident, Patrick McNamara, the owner of a small milk distribution company in Asheville, told CNN that his business was torn apart by floodwaters when the storm hit.
When the day broke Saturday, McNamara was able to get a first look at the devastation Helene left behind. “The water was five feet above the dock,” McNamara told CNN. “So the whole building was wiped out.”
The facility's machinery was scattered throughout the warehouse, the milk was spoiled, and mud was all over the floor. He estimates that he will have to get rid of thousands of liters of milk. “Here's our cooler, that's what's left of the inventory that's not in the middle of the road,” McNamara said as he walked through the warehouse.
He says his biggest problem is cleaning up the mud that flowed into the warehouse. “That was two or three inches solid,” he said, as he grabbed a shovel and started pushing mud across the floor. “You know, it's not an easy cleanup job.”
According to McNamara, the water flowed over the 5-foot loading dock and flooded the building with an estimated 1.5 feet of water. It is unknown when resources such as water and electricity will come back online. McNamara said they may have to consider moving the business to another location temporarily.
“We're looking at some places in Asheville. We are here to stay, but it is a difficult and unique business,” said McNamara. “So not everyone has the facilities that match what we are looking for.”
Up to an inch of total rain is expected in some parts of western North Carolina, including Asheville, over the weekend. The governor said Saturday morning that “significant danger from this storm still exists” in a post on X.
In McDowell County, near Yancey, more than 20 air rescues have been conducted since Saturday morning, according to local authorities.
McDowell County's emergency center is flooded with calls every hour, often involving patients “trapped with severe trauma, without oxygen or essential medical supplies,” the agency said.
“In many areas, emergency responders are unable to reach people in need due to massive landslides, fallen trees, power lines and severely flooded roads,” the agency added.
CNN's Caroline Jaime, Zoe Sottile, Taylor Galgano, Rafael Romo and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com
