After Helene's destruction, North Carolina starts to rebuild

When Hurricane Helene roared over the mountains before dawn last week, it brought a maelstrom of water that rose to the mailbox of Shelby Holzhauser's little white house on the banks of the Swannanoa River. To get food and water, for days she's had to don a backpack and trudge past mounds of debris left by the killer storm as it destroyed everything in its path. "There's no power, no water," Holzhauser said as her four-year-old son Carter clung to her legs.

Under sunny skies on Thursday, crews in the town of Swannanoa and all over in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina were fixing roads, pipes and electricity lines destroyed by the hurricane. The death toll stood at more than 200 throughout several southeast states. North Carolina was the hardest hit, recording half of the fatalities.

"Us living on a hill, we thought we were going to be okay. But it got really close enough to where I had to get my son out of the house, and I was scared that we were going to get stuck," the 23-year-old preschool teacher said. Nearly a week after the storm hit, and the hulks of ruined cars and other detritus have been cleared from the main roads. But life was far from normal. To flush the toilet, Holzhauser has to use water from the river. As she spoke to AFP, her husband fired up a generator that his employer lent them so they can cook. Elsewhere in town, men staffed a large stand with basic necessities at a shuttered gas station. "We're all sticking together. Everybody's helping each other," said Holzhauser.

A lifetime resident of this mountain region, Holzhauser said life before Helene meant working all the time to earn money and get by, and she never really bonded with her neighbours. But that has changed. "I guess ever since the disaster happened, I was actually able to get close with my neighbors. They came down to check on us, make sure we had what we needed," she said. Harrowing tales are everywhere and a neighbour named Vincent Floriani is no different. He stood outside a house he rents out, the floor of which was covered in six inches (15 centimeters) of muck.

As floodwaters nearly reached the ceiling of the house on the day of the storm, Floriani's tenant wriggled his way out and swam until someone saved him in a kayak.  Floriani could not find him for days and feared the worst, until the man called Wednesday from a hospital.

"It was the happiest phone call I ever had," he told AFP, his house now sporting an ugly brown line marking the water's height -- at least seven feet (more than two meters). "It is just utter devastation," said Floriani. "These houses have been here for 100 years, and there's never been a flood like this." In the parking lot of a closed fast-food restaurant, veterinarians offered free emergency care for pets. Audrey Pace, a veterinary technician, came out to help.

"There's a lot of grief right now, and we know a lot about grief, so come to us. We're going to love you," said Pace. "Pets are people's unconditional love and their unconditional companions," she added, then stepped away as a car arrived with a dog in the passenger seat.

In a nearby field helicopters took off and landed with a loud whir.

A bit further away, an area of mobile homes — typical of poor rural spots in the United States — was swept away. From one of them, Christmas decorations and a child's Star Wars outfit stuck out through a destroyed wall. There was no one inside. President Joe Biden toured storm-hit areas on Wednesday and flew over the city of Asheville, which is near Swannanoa.  Biden sent in more soldiers to assist recovery efforts after Donald Trump, seeking re-election in November against Vice President Kamala Harris, accused him of being slow to help hurricane victims. Holzhauser said the rebuilding effort so far has been "great." Twenty yards (meters) from her house, workers laid new water pipes and heavy equipment repaired damaged roads.

But as she looked out over the activity, Holzhauser knew what lies ahead.  "This is going to take a while to recover," she said.

Meanwhile, Biden travelled on Thursday to Florida's northern Gulf coast, where Helene roared ashore last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour. He took an aerial tour of the devastation, then walked past rows of destroyed homes in Keaton Beach, near where the storm made landfall.

Homes were "just wiped away, just an entire island gone," Biden said afterward while visiting Georgia. "Families, they lost everything, including loved ones," he added, and pledged the full support of the federal government in helping communities recover.

Researchers say climate change likely plays a role in the rapid intensification of storms, because there is more energy in a warmer ocean for them to feed on.  Biden said on Wednesday while touring North Carolina that a person "must be brain-dead" to deny the climate crisis and its impact. Former president Donald Trump, who is seeking re-election in November, has called climate change a hoax.

Agence France-Presse