“We are right along the river.”

Nora Augustine and Silias Heying live in Newland, NC, a community that experienced extreme flooding from Hurricane Helene.

“The rains were pretty heavy starting on Wednesday, and we were going to stay,” Silias said. “But then about Thursday, we saw that the river was rising fast. And so, we managed to get out in time.”

Both went to a hotel to wait out the storm.

“The hotel also lost power, so we were stranded there for a while,” Silias said. “There was a raging river on the road; it was just completely impassable for days. We managed to get back here (home), and we saw that it was pretty destroyed. Our house was still standing, but many others weren’t as lucky.”

The home was elevated but they still experienced two feet of flooding inside their home and lost most of their belongings.

“It’s a mess out here. We knew this area was going to be hit, and we had heard that the college where we work was monitoring the situation. We were thinking about what we would do to manage things on Thursday and Friday, but I really wasn’t expecting damage to this extent,” Silias said.

Nora explained, it’s comforting to see the community and other organizations, like the Red Cross, come show their support and provide relief.

“We’re just trying to clean up. It’s nice to see so many people coming out and driving by and helping each other out. It definitely makes us feel hopeful,” Nora said. “It will definitely be months, maybe many months, before we have any sense of normalcy again.”

Silias agreed and said “it’s comforting to see people are looking out for us. Thank y’all, the Red Cross for helping. It’s still a mess, but thank you so much.”