North Carolina mountain community braces for hurricane season two years after Helene's brutal impact

As hurricane season approaches, people in the mountain communities of Western North Carolina are bracing for any impacts nearly two years after Hurricane Helene unleashed its wrath on the region.

Residents say they're "traumatized" after Hurricane Helene's brutal attack, which claimed over one hundred lives and tore thousands of homes and businesses to pieces. 

"We still have nightmares, flashbacks," said Jackie Fenstermacher, while sitting next to her sister Cynthia Dunn in Fairview, North Carolina. The small town sits in a valley beneath the mountains just outside of Asheville. 

Fenstermacher moved to the mountains thirty years ago. Before Helene hit, she was still moving into her new home with her sister, Cynthia.

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Unfortunately, there's nothing left of the sister's home. 

On the morning of Sept. 27, 2024, the water from the creek nearby was rising rapidly, Fenstermacher said, and before she knew it, logs from a nearby sawmill began pummeling her new home. 

"It was like the house was being bombed," she said, "and then the whole - the bedroom just ripped apart."

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Fenstermacher immediately put her sister and their dog on a bed. Their home was torn to pieces and the three of them floated for miles downstream. The bed eventually broke and they were crammed into a pile of debris. 

"All you could hear is giant trees snapping, glass breaking, cars going by," Fenstermacher said.

Volunteers found them two days later stuck in the pile of debris. 

Over the last twenty months, the sisters have lived in FEMA housing, campers, and sheds. On their property is a shed-turned-temporary-home, but it has no insulation. 

With help from the local organization, Divine Disaster Relief, the sisters are staying in Airbnb's until they can raise enough money for a new home. 

"We’re all still playing catch up, you know, and figuring it out," said Divine Disaster Relief case manager Celestiel Balson. "But there are so many people still in campers, still in temporary housing, still in sheds."

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Balson is helping the sisters raise the funds needed to get them into a safe new home. 

The sisters say they don't want to stay on the same property, as even the sound of rain is haunting. 

"So we just kind of freak out a little bit because we don't know if we're going to have a house in a minute or two," Cynthia Dunn said.

They're not the only ones in the region still feeling the impacts of Helene.

Buncombe County's Assistant Manager, Timothy Love said, "I think for a long time, folks might have felt that we were immune to some of, some of these concerns, but if we look in history, we're not."

On June 2, the county's commissioners approved funding to turn an old JCPenney building in the Asheville Mall into the county's first standalone emergency operations center. 

"It's really important to have dedicated space," Love said, "Because, you know, you unfortunately, you don't know when a disaster is going to strike. And the scope of it."

Love said the communication between local, state and federal partners needs to be seamless if a disaster hits the area again. 

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The new emergency operations center will not be open for a couple of years, but will integrate all aspects of emergency services. 

"Additional uses are Emergency Management Services Group as well as our public safety communications or 911. That'll be located there," Love said.