Logs, embedded vehicles and mangled trailers line the only road through Pensacola, North Carolina, a week after Tropical Storm Helene slammed into the small Yancey County town. But the worst physical damage is not so obvious, according to locals.
“There are a lot of houses that you wouldn’t know were ever there if you hadn’t lived here all your life,” said Noah Davis, a local handyman. “There will be a Pensacola before the storm and one after the storm.”
Consecutive days of heavy rain late last week overwhelmed the remote community of about 500 people in Pisgah National Forest — 22 miles and a world away from Asheville. Pensacola is located south of Burnsville in a hollow between two hills. The Cattail Creek runs along a mountainside and the Cane River flows beneath it.
Early Friday morning, the creek overflowed, sending a current toward the city, at the same time the river swelled and invaded. “We were surrounded by water,” said resident Joyce Maness. “Our floors gave way.”
After three days, Christa Robinson felt the creek had receded enough for her to leave her home in the Cattail Creek community, above Pensacola. With her seven-year-old daughter Lilly, she walked — and sometimes slid — into Pensacola, where they spent the next night at the local firehouse.
Robinson remembers the immense local flood of 1977. Unlike then, last week she felt the entire mountain moving.
“The highway is gone,” said Mark Harrison, medical officer for the Pensacola Fire Department. “Most of the houses are gone.”
The rescue and recovery began this weekend as volunteers rode four-wheelers through muddy, muddy corridors. Pensacola Road is the city’s only direct connection to the rest of Western North Carolina, and by Thursday enough of the eroded asphalt had been cleared to barely allow trucks to pass through.
U.S. Army personnel arrived on the scene Thursday to distribute supplies, while helicopters delivered medicine, equipment and food to hard-to-reach areas. Search and rescue teams from Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Kansas and elsewhere visited every standing home to document the devastation. Citizens helped further and offered their services to neighbors as mechanics, movers and transporters.
“The lack of roads has been the biggest problem logistically,” said Davis, who estimated he evacuated at least 30 people on his four-wheeler.
Another major obstacle concerns all those affected. The Cattail Creek community in particular has a significant number of vacation homes. Were their owners out of town during the storm? Or have they disappeared now?
These are the questions people want answered.
“After COVID hit, a lot of people started coming in here, and we have no idea how many residents there are,” Harrison said. “We evacuated all the critical people we could. Now it is more or less preventive.”
As for fatalities, Harrison declined to share a specific number but said “it’s clear” people were killed. In recent days, donations have poured into the firehouse, the community’s makeshift recovery center. When asked what else Pensacola residents need, Harrison listed medications including antibiotics and methadone.
