(WGHP) — When something hasn’t happened in more than a century, you can understand why it’s not top of mind for some folks. And then when it happens, you wonder why you didn’t see it coming.
When Hurricane Helene dropped a couple of feet of water on the North Carolina mountains over a day or so, and then that water ran down the mountainsides and collected as much more than a couple of feet where it aggregated, it created real problems.
Carter Francois knows all about that. Carter owned The Alpine Inn until a majority of it rolled down the mountain because of Helene’s flooding and the landslides. He’d only owned the place a few years.
“I was looking from Maine down to Florida and something that I could afford that makes money, and this seemed to be a pretty good thing,” Carter said.
Nothing like Helene had happened here since well before Carter’s grandparents were born, but the flooding that happened that Thursday and Friday in late September changed everything.
“It was a nightmare,” Carter said. “We also had a tornado that hit us. That’s when I think I knew we were in trouble … It went through my bedroom, and you could feel it … It came through the middle section and blew up the kitchen window.”
That night, Carter made sure the couple of people who decided to stay through the storm got to safety just in time.
“There was a tree … that went down,” he said, pointing down the mounting where his inn once stood. “And I kind of knew that we were in trouble.”
The recovery is moving very slowly. Every day, you hear the buzz of chainsaws cutting up downed trees, and you can’t drive more than half a mile around the mountain roads without coming across crews working to restore power.
The work of federal organizations like FEMA is moving a bit more slowly as they first assess needs.
“We’re very fortunate to get the $750 that (FEMA) gave us,” Carter said. “But the next step is … assessing this situation.”
It doesn’t take long for Carter to sum up his situation.
“Every last drop of my money went into that,” he said while looking at the mess that was his inn. “I’m not destitute, but it’s going to be a long, long process.”
See more of Carter’s journey to recovery after Helene in this edition of The Buckley Report.
