Stunning video and images out of western North Carolina show a popular mountain lake eerily packed with the ruins of a nearby village after powerful wind and floodwaters brought by Hurricane Helena ripped through the area late last week.
One video taken Sunday by a Charlotte, North Carolina, city councilman shows the usually picturesque Lake Lure coated with splintered wood, trees, fragmented docks, boats and other various items.
Councilman Tariq Scott Bokhari, who said he shot the video during a day trip to the area to assist friends and determine how outsiders can help, described the scene as “post-apocalyptic” on social media.
Went to help in the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area today, and it’s hard to describe – never seen anything like this. Post apocalyptic. It’s so overwhelming you don’t even know how to fathom what recovery looks like, let alone where to start. Going to be a long path to recovery that… pic.twitter.com/HnyxwyQB76
— Tariq Scott Bokhari (@FinTechInnov8r) September 29, 2024
“What I saw was really hard to describe, almost incomprehensible when you think about the magnitude of the impacts,” he told HuffPost by phone Monday. “In that video that I posted, (it’s) just a sea of things. You really have to focus your eyes on individual items to get a sense of just how big and significant of an event it is.”
Debris from surrounding homes and the nearby village of Chimney Rock rushed into the lake after more than a foot of rain deluged the area, approximately 30 miles southeast of Asheville, which suffered similar devastation.
“It was essentially just a moving blender that was just tearing through everything in its path,” Bokhari said of the swell of debris that consisted of metal and concrete.
“How do you even start the recovery process? We’re still in crisis management, locating missing people, but the magnitude of rebuilding and cleaning up after this, it’s not anything that a normal human can comprehend,” he said.
President Joe Biden said Monday he plans to travel to North Carolina later this week after hearing reports of more than 100 dead and up to 600 others unaccounted for due to lost power and cell phone service throughout the region.
“God willing they’re alive,” he said of those missing.
Rescue crews responding to Chimney Rock on Saturday from Pamlico County, approximately 370 miles east, said they reached the area only after abandoning their boats and swimming across the river to assist. Once there, the county’s emergency management team said in a social media post that they helped the Chimney Rock Fire Department rescue four people and one dog. Another 106 other people, two cats and two dogs were evacuated.
“I’ve never seen concentrated damage like we’ve seen here,” Chris Murray, a Pamlico County emergency manager, told The News & Observer. “The village? There’s just nothing left.”
