Vital Lessons Emerge from Hurricane Helene's Deadly Inland Torrents in Spots Unreached by Warnings

The best federal storm warnings matter little if they don't reach those in harm's way

ProPublica just published a deeply-reported and wrenching report looking back at Hurricane Helene’s devastating and deadly impact on hard-hit Yancey County in western North Carolina. The story shows vividly how even the best federal and local weather forecasting comes to naught if information on what to do doesn’t reach people in harm’s way in time (and if they aren’t responsive).

Disaster preparedness and responsiveness are a function of much more than data.

Jennifer Berry Hawes, the lead ProPublica reporter, posted a thread on X that is almost as valuable as the story itself (which you can read below). Here’s some of what she said:

As hurricane season approaches, I want to tell you why I spent the past 4 months reporting this new story about Hurricane Helene. In 1999, I spent 13 hours in a car on a gridlocked interstate with my 3-week-old baby during the disastrous mass evacuation from Hurricane Floyd.

Many states, including my home state of South Carolina, have dramatically improved coastal evacuations since. But when Hurricane Helene closed in on the mountains of North Caroline, I was struck by how many people were in their homes along rivers and creeks already flooded from 2 days of prior rain.

Most were largely unaware of the catastrophic danger approaching – despite dire NWS NWSGSP warnings….

…Unlike in several nearby counties, Yancey officials did not issue evacuation orders. How local officials across the region communicated weather service warnings varied considerably…

Read the full thread

One factor driving losses in Helene was vulnerable communication infrastructure, with storm winds taking out cell service before flood warnings were issued.

Wireless Estimator story

Another was human failures at local agencies. Another is inadequate community awareness of the threat level from flash flooding in this hilly region, which has had such epic torrents, but not within living memory. See my “Mind the Gap” flood graphic at the bottom of the post.

Great reporting isn’t enough

The kind of post-disaster analysis done here by ProPublica (and other news outlets) is essential if federal, state and local agencies, the private sector and society at large are to develop more resilient policies and practices in the stormy years ahead. It’s fantastic, particularly, that the story was co-published by three local news outlets.

But the process shouldn’t be left to reporters. The United States is way past due to create an independent nonpartisan disaster review board akin to the National Transportation Safetey Board, as experts (and some lawmakers) have been saying since 2006.

Insert - In July 2020, as the pandemic raged, I discussed the need for a National Disaster Review Board with a batch of experts. Here’s my summary, with a reply from Alice C. Hill, an Obama-era national security official now at the Council on Foreign Relations (full discussion):

Here’s a key section of the ProPublica Helene story, but do read the full piece. The remains of Hurricane Helene collided with the mountainous landscape in western North Carolina starting Thursday, September 26. This section of the story picks up Friday morning and centers on Yancey County:

The county commission recently received a draft of an emergency operations plan that warned, “A mass casualty event has the potential to quickly overwhelm the limited existing emergency medical resources in Yancey County.”

Now, on Friday morning, the wind and rain turn fierce. At 45, Sheriff Shane Hilliard hasn’t seen anything like it during his entire life here. Just before 8 a.m., he texts his mother to check in, but he doesn’t get a response. His parents live right on the South Toe River in the house he grew up in. His 92-year-old grandmother lives alone next door.

Rain whips downtown Burnsville, the county seat where the sheriff and other officials gather in the Emergency Operations Center. This command post is basically three desks, a conference table and four big TVs on the wall in a building near the courthouse.

In an adjacent building, calls pour into the county’s 911 center.

Landslides claw down the mountains. Hurricane-force winds splinter trees. Rivers snatch cars and rip apart homes. People climb into attics or swim through windows. A firefighter makes a distress call as the Cane River near Cattail Creek swamps his trailer. A deputy trying to rescue a family from their flooding home becomes trapped with them.

Dispatch blasts out an all-call: First responders must get off the roads. It’s too dangerous.

Jeff Howell, Yancey County’s emergency management director, watches the radar as storm imagery shifts to red. Helene’s rainfall now resembles blood-filled lungs hanging over the Black Mountains.

Howell, who has deep roots in the area, took the job seven years ago after three decades in the Army and Army Reserves. He had no experience with emergency management, so it’s been a lot of learn-as-you-go. For years he asked for extra hands, but as Helene approached, the department was just him and a part-time employee.

Now Howell faces the biggest test of his time in the office.

Over the past week, he watched each forecast turn more ominous, with western North Carolina in a bullseye of the heaviest rainfall. Yesterday around noon, a lead meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s regional office ended its final briefing before Helene’s arrival with a grim, “Good luck, everyone.”

The office also issued a public statement that warned, “Landslides, including fast-moving debris flows consisting of water, mud, falling rocks, trees, and other large debris, are most likely within small valleys that drain steep slopes.”

Around the same time, weather service staff also took to social media to post the dire message that Janicke Glynn’s tenant had seen: “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era.”

“We cannot stress the significance of this event enough,” it added. “Heed all evacuation orders from your local Emergency Managers.”

Unlike in South Carolina, where the governor typically makes evacuation decisions, in North Carolina, local and county governments primarily make them. Howell, the official who would recommend evacuation orders to the county commission chair, didn’t do so. In this largely conservative place — fresh off a culture war battle over a Pride display at the local library — he didn’t think the chair would go for them. Nor did he think residents would heed orders, given many locals’ disdain for government mandates and their pride in self-reliance.

People who survived Helene say it’s true that not everyone would — or could — have heeded an order. But some say they would have left, or at least prepared better. Many, including those living in high-risk areas and caring for young children and frail older people, didn’t evacuate because they didn’t see clearer signs of urgency from the county.

By nightfall on Sept. 26, the day before Helene struck, three nearby counties issued mandatory evacuation orders for certain areas and at least five issued voluntary ones. Among Yancey’s rural neighbors, one of the most robust responses to Helene came from McDowell County. Officials there issued voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders for specific areas, launched two door-knocking campaigns to warn people in high-risk places, and put out flyers in English and Spanish that warned of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” Many did so.

Yancey also did some door knocking. Howell joined first responders urging people in the most obviously dangerous places to consider leaving. Not everyone appreciated the warning. Howell got an earful before finally convincing a man to leave a campground almost encircled by the South Toe River.

Like officials across the region, Howell took to Facebook as well. Around lunchtime on Sept. 26, he shared the weather service’s latest grim briefing and suggested people make plans to stay somewhere else if they live near flood-prone areas. But while the weather service aimed to alarm people into action with its dire post, Howell thought it best not to panic them.

So he softened the message, adding, “This information is not to frighten anyone.”

About 150 yards up the hill from their century-old house, Brian and Susie Hill huddled in their pickup truck with their little girl and dog overnight as rain poured and darkness enveloped Cattail Creek.

Now, a few hours after sunrise, they watch their house drown.

Read the full story: Helene’s Unheard Warnings

by Jennifer Berry Hawes, with additional reporting by Cassandra Garibay. Graphics and development by Lucas Waldron. Design by Anna Donlan. Visual editing by Shoshana Gordon and Donlan. Research by Mollie Simon.

Here’s the region’s history of rare megafloods distilled by me into a card you can distribute to explain the importance of gauging the worst threats over suitable spans of time:

Of course, please read and share this piece on the need for a Natrional Disaster Review Board:

And here’s more on the Helene impact and next steps: