Helene-Ravaged North Carolina Endures New Flooding

Screen grab from WCNC shows a footbridge built
after Hurricane Helene being carried away downstream
by renewed flooding in western 
North Carolina last weekend. 

 The storm system that spread tornadoes across the South last weekend also caused renewed flooding and heartache in parts of North Carolina still reeling from the cataclysmic Hurricane Helene floods that struck in late September. 

The flooding wasn't anywhere remotely as bad as what happened in September, and wasn't even that extreme by North Carolina standards. 

But the post-Helene western North Carolina landscape is far from rebuilt.  A lot of ad hoc repairs that weren't meant to be permanent were washed away, creating a new, big setback. 

The storms dumped several inches of rain on some mountainous areas of North Carolina. 

As WCNC video showed, a temporary bridge that connected families to the outside world floated away amid high water in Avery County, northeast of Asheville. 

"We did do a lot of work early on to get footbridges build for folks so they at least had access to their homes, and those were all washed away," Robin Allis of the group Bridges for Avery told the television station. 

The group will need to raise more money to once again replace those bridges. It looks like they'll have to replace up to 100 temporary bridges wrecked by the weekend's heavy rain and high water.  I can only imagine the emotional toll the heavy rain and renewed flash flooding also had on people traumatized by Hurricane Helene. 

Officials in Avery County and elsewhere in western North Carolina said Helene has left rivers more unstable and debris-choked, so even relatively modest storms can cause renewed damage.  

In neighboring Tennessee, officials this weekend had to release water from behind the Walters Dam on the Pigeon River because of the heavy rain running off from the North Carolina mountains. The release caused a flood that swept away large pieces of equipment being used to repair a hydro station on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. 

A temporary ford giving access to residents across a river in Yancy County, North Carolina also washed away, but repairs to the makeshift path across the river was expected to finish by the New Year. 

This episode illustrates how important it is to rebuilt fully as quickly as possible after a big disaster, and to make that rebuilt environment as climate and disaster-resistant as possible.

Meanwhile, people still trying to recover from the Helene disaster are facing nighttime temperatures crashing down into the single numbers and teens and highs on some days remaining below 32 degrees. An ugly mix of rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow are in the forecast for the disaster zone Sunday and Monday.