Helene’s Floods: When catastrophe comes to pass
Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee are reeling this week from the onslaught of historic floods associated with Hurricane Helene.
Entire neighborhoods washed away in the immense flooding. Major highways are severed. Dozens, if not hundreds, of roads no longer exist. Public utilities like water, electricity, and phone services are hanging by a thread if they’re connected at all. The death toll, which just climbed above 100 as of this post, will almost certainly rise higher as officials finally make their way into the hardest-hit communities.
By all accounts, this is the new flood of record for western North Carolina. The previous benchmark event was the Great Flood of 1916, the result of two tropical storms that hit the region one after the other.
Hurricane Helene’s rains were also a one-two punch that overwhelmed the region with more water than it could handle. I wrote more about it for The Weather Network over the weekend.
A predecessor rain event (PRE) brought 8-10+ inches of rain in the days before Hurricane Helene ever made landfall. Saturated soils and swollen waterways were already a major problem by the time Helene’s core reached the region, dropping the final push of torrential rains that turned a dangerous situation into pure chaos.
It was a well-predicted fiasco. The words “catastrophic,” “devastating,” and “life-threatening” filled the forecasts for days before the floods.
The southern Blue Ridge remains under a high risk for excessive rainfall through Friday, which signals extreme confidence among meteorologists that major flash flooding will occur throughout the region. Flash flooding is possible across areas that may not typically flood. Landslides and road washouts are likely in vulnerable areas.
It doesn’t matter how accurate the forecasts were. Flash flood warnings were timely and plentiful. Meteorologists used phrases like “flash flood emergency” to convey the severity of the situation.
But it’s impossible to adequately prepare for 30 inches of rain. You can do everything right—have a plan, buy insurance, monitor the forecasts, heed alerts—and still nothing can prepare you for the aftermath of nearly a year’s worth of rain falling in a couple of days.
There are natural catastrophes, and then there are catastrophes made even worse by human failures. Last week’s flooding raised comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, the flooding from which killed more than one thousand people. This is not Katrina because Katrina’s aftermath was made far worse by a cascade of human failures. Human-made levees failed. The response was slow and botched to a shameful extent. Katrina was a natural catastrophe that coincided with a societal catastrophe.
The flooding that devastated dozens of communities throughout the southern Appalachians was a natural catastrophe through and through. No amount of planning or preparation can contain the runoff from a year’s worth of rain falling in mere days. Streams turned to rivers, rivers turned to oceans, and the valleys bore the brunt of nature’s impersonal destruction.
Anger is fresh in the wake of a calamitous storm. People want to blame something, someone, anyone, anything, for the havoc that befell a vast swath of our fellow Americans. There’s lots of anger aimed at state and federal officials for the seemingly slow response to communities no longer connected to the outside world.
Some of that anger is righteous, but much of it is contrived by outsiders looking to score points off the dripping ruins of their neighbors in need.
Bridges washed out and ravines carved into the earth where roads once existed. How are supplies supposed to instantly hustle into towns now severed from society? Helicopters need somewhere safe to land and rubble-strewn communities are nestled on rugged terrain in tree-lined valleys. Air drops require coordination with people on the ground—people who can’t easily drive to where their help is needed the most, and where communication links are tenuous at best.
It’s going to be days and possibly weeks before the full scope of Helene’s human toll is known to the outside world. Recovery will be measured in months and years. Some residents are almost certainly never going to return; some communities will never rebuild to the way they were before the rain started.
We can shout accurate forecasts from the rooftops. Adequate warnings can make phones sing like slot machines. But when catastrophe comes to pass—a true, generational catastrophe—there’s little even our modern conveniences can do to stave off heartbreaking levels of devastation.
[Images: Civil Air Patrol | NCDOT]
