We are still surviving down here, but personally doing better. Our power, water, and internet access is restored, gas has also been restored and there is fuel everywhere now. The areas around us aren't so lucky. We have a ton of resources/aid coming but everything I've seen to date is from individuals loading cars, driving up, and dropping them off. I think most of the aid is being handed out closer to Asheville, but the smaller towns are still in big trouble and a lot of them are flat out unreachable on car. We're trying to help where we can and running for supplies in/out, but Monday is going to be a rough day, temps are supposed to drop into the 40s this week and there is a shortage of cold weather gear for those stranded. We've been running blankets and sleeping bags back/forth from larger cities trying to get enough in distribution but it's going to be hard.
Individuals are loading up helicopters and flying things in, along with performing rescues and getting people out of remote areas. Others are loading mules up and hauling things back/forth. Some are hiking in and out, but vehicle access to these areas is days or months away in some cases. People here are pretty resilient and often self sustaining due to the terrain but many aren't or can't be even if they had the choice.
I'll also never complain about Facebook again. There are people who are alive right now because they got a call for help out and I've seen a multitude of groups organizing to bring assistance. The fact the app continues to retry posting things when it fails likely helped a LOT, iMessage/text and a lot of messaging formats just fail after a few minutes, some others keep trying. As a developer, I've long thought there was a safety issue with that when you got into this exact case. When cell signal is in/out and very limited, the sheer fact messages kept trying to be sent is probably something that helped a lot compared to text messages. I was able to get messages out on some platforms due to this.
Anyway. Here are some photos.
This is from the kitchen in my Dad's house:
The house will likely be condemned and bulldozed. This happened 4 hours from the storm ending and so water just poured into the house, all through the flooring into the basement, destroyed wiring, and so on.
This is a common sight. Apparently most flood deaths occur in vehicles (according to the wx radio anyway), if you don't know how to cross water in a vehicle....don't. There are a lot of swiftwater rescues here in normal circumstances due to this very thing, people trying to drive and getting stalled in the water then they have to be rescued (the person in this vehicle was fine).
This is one of the main roads in/out and is part of the reason access is challenging, all roads in/out except one were severely damaged with a projected repair date of Sept
2025. This also makes getting aid to TN VERY hard.
This is a common sight around here and why access is so difficult:
This is further north in Asheville. The first photo is an area called Biltmore Village that used to have a ton of businesses, places to eat, etc. Some of those are just gone now.
This isn't even close to the worst of it. I could go on for pages about it. The death toll will likely continue to rise for a while and I doubt it'll ever be fully known.