There are a lot of people hurting. When you don't have power, when you don't have cellphone service, when you don't have water, this is a catastrophic situation for you,
And as the president said this morning, we're very hopeful that some of those people just don't have cell phones working and actually are alive,
When I said there could be up to 600 people lost my point was, there 600 people unaccounted for,
We looked outside and there was a 30-foot-tall wall of water and rocks and tree debris just coming at us,
I crawled around screaming, looking for her, ... and I just couldn't find her."
And we all got washed downriver."
I'm pretty familiar with disaster zones and this is worse than any I've seen before,
Some of our communities are completely wiped out,
It was a sinking feeling in my stomach because I knew that everybody still there just had no idea what the coming suffering and misery would look like,
Over the past few days, our nation has endured some of the worst destruction and devastation that we have seen in quite some time
There's no roads, there's no evidence of roads, there's no trees, it's just water and stuff,
We're not talking about politics now,
The vice president, she's out someplace, campaigning, looking for money,
The devastation was beyond belief, and even when you prepare for something like this, this is something that’s never happened before in western North Carolina. Search and rescue teams are continuing to work,
Little did I know that up there, Helene has demolished roads, homes and utility networks. **This area is completely cut off from resources in every direction.** I tried multiple routes to drive up but had to settle on parking in Marion at the base of a closed road (Hwys 221/226) and hiking 11 miles and 2,200 feet to find my parents thankfully ok but surrounded by devastation. I have never been so relieved to see anyone ok,
Crews weren't even close yesterday. I can't tell you how many failing roads and deep mudslides I had to cross, how many fallen trees I had to take off my backpack for and navigate through. While hiking up 226A, I met multiple people trapped by devastation in both directions of the highway,
We requested water even before the storm started — because we knew that — not that it was going to fail — but we were asking for water so that people could have extra,
It is true we are operating a lot of missions across a lot of disasters,
If the public is just told water etc was dropped off at point X we could see people actually fighting over who gets what,
There should have been a more urgent call for people to be prepared,