'Helene's Unheard Warnings' raises awareness about natural disaster preparedness in remote communities

Hurricane Helene was widely reported in the press, and intensive news coverage continued as the storm’s aftermath left behind death and destruction in the western part of North Carolina. But by January, with the California wildfires and presidential election, Helene had largely fallen off the news cycle. 

That didn’t sit right with reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes. Her ProPublica article, "Helene’s Unheard Warnings," published this week, chronicles the lives of some of those who lost the most, and why many were caught completely off guard. 

She spoke with WFDD's David Ford.

Interview Highlights

On why she chose to write about small mountain communities about an hour north of Asheville:

"So I went up to Asheville first, to Swannanoa, some of the main places you do see more coverage out of. And then I went up to Yancey County because someone made an introduction there and also I wanted to tell the story more in terms of people who had a real connection to the landscape and the beauty of the mountains and the rivers and all of that, because it really just struck me that there was this betrayal of that landscape that I wanted to convey. And when I went to Yancey, I was so struck by the contrast between the natural beauty of the place and just the enormity of the devastation. There was endless amounts of what just looked like a moonscape along all of the rivers and creeks. And it was to a degree that I felt would be a real challenge to even describe."

On comparing the impacts of hurricanes on mountain communities and coastal communities:

"I grew up in Florida. And I think the difference in my mind, anyway, is that we are used to seeing pictures and videos of the damage that coastal storm surge causes. You know, we've all watched this on the news for decades. What we haven't seen is this kind of destruction in a mountain terrain. For one thing, the landslides and all of the trees which are different from what you would see in a coastal area. And the landscape isn't accustomed to that kind of destruction. The Florida landscape is.

I remember driving around [Yancey County] with someone who lives there and seeing, you know, a picnic bench up in a tree. You know, you don't see that in the same way in coastal communities. One thing, they just batten down more. When a big hurricane comes, they've been through this a lot; they batten everything down. They evacuate the people. It's somewhat routine in a place like where I live. It's not routine up there, and people aren't used to doing that, and so it was really as if people were living their normal lives until Helene came, and then it was just exploded."

On why National Weather Service warnings went unheeded: 

"So throughout that week, the National Weather Service Forecast had become more and more grim for the North Carolina mountains. It was becoming clear it was going to take a solid hit. And that message ... went out around lunchtime the day before the storm hit. ... Some of them didn't get the dire warnings, and that is one issue, right? They didn't see the National Weather Service messaging. They didn't hear the degree of alarm from their local officials that might have gotten them to act. We didn't see a whole lot of mandatory evacuation orders. We saw counties that didn't have any evacuation orders at all, including voluntary ones, and that is something that a lot of people, especially along the areas where we really canvassed residents, that was something we heard a lot of, was that they said, 'Well, we didn't see signs that made me think this was going to be sort of catastrophic.'

So my hope with this story is that people will read it and give a lot of important thought to how to respond to a storm like this, or even a smaller storm, because it doesn't take a hurricane to create devastating flash flooding in the mountains, and that's one of the big takeaways I hope people leave with is that, you know, with climate change, we're getting more powerful storms, and with more powerful storms it's going to come more flash flooding in the mountains, and I hope that people will be better prepared.