When Helene tore through western North Carolina last week, it triggered floods and mudslides that smashed away neighborhoods and took out vital infrastructure. Already isolated communities became information black holes, cut off from the world and each other.
Local journalists have spent the days since trying to reach those communities and fill in information gaps — all the while dealing with storm-wrought damage in their own lives. Attempts to document the devastation and give residents essential information about available resources have been complicated by communications issues from the storm.
“It’s just been really hard to get information because of the lack of communication available. Whether it’s Wi-Fi or cell service, there’s really not much,” said Blue Ridge Public Radio senior regional reporter Lilly Knoepp in an interview Monday afternoon. “We really haven’t gotten updates from a number of counties, so we’re not sure if there are fatalities. A lot of people just still don’t have any power, and so there hasn’t been any way to confirm what’s going on.”
More than 360,000 customers in North Carolina still don’t have power as of Tuesday morning, down from a peak of 1 million. Those who have power may not have Wi-Fi or cell service. Impassable roads and fuel shortages have made connecting with others even more difficult.
Knoepp, who lives in Sylva, about an hour west of Asheville, said she has had to use the Wi-Fi at her friends’ places or in downtown businesses to file stories. A lot of her colleagues in Asheville are working at the station, but they have their own issues. Many of them don’t have water, and one of Knoepp’s colleagues told her that she was trying to walk everywhere to conserve fuel. The station itself briefly went off air Friday to preserve generator power during an outage.
The communications issues also affect sources, further hindering journalists’ abilities to do their jobs. One mayor Knoepp talked to Monday told her that because of cell service issues, her phone call was the first he had gotten since the storm hit Friday.
“We still just don’t know so much about what’s going on in western North Carolina,” Knoepp said. “Most of the counties that I talk to and ask about potential for fatalities or missing persons — they just don’t know.”
At least 56 people have died in North Carolina as of Tuesday morning, and the total death toll from Hurricane Helene across the Southeast is at least 135. Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer told CNN Monday night that roughly 600 people in Asheville remain unaccounted for.
Asheville Watchdog managing editor Keith Campbell said Tuesday morning that he has yet to be able to get in touch with a couple of staff members. He was planning to do a welfare check later in the day.
“I’m sure they’re safe. They may be out of town — they may have left town — but I don’t know,” Campbell said. “I’m not worried that they’re injured or worse. I just am wondering what the state of their homes are and that sort of thing.”
In the meantime, he’s checked in with other members of the team — sometimes in person. On Friday, Campbell, who lives roughly 25 minutes north of Asheville, navigated closed and impassable roads to check on the site’s co-founders in Asheville and found that they had no power or water. Another reporter had a tree fall on his house.
“One of my reporters … was on a quest for water. He was going to different grocery stores just trying to find water for his family. He reported that at one grocery store, the line was 200 people deep, and he gave up,” Campbell said. “I offered to bring him water later in the day if he needs it since we have running water up here. This is the kind of environment we’re working and living in right now.”
The Asheville Watchdog is primarily an investigative outlet and doesn’t normally cover breaking news. But on Sunday, the site had a page with live updates on outages and city services in the wake of the storm.
“We felt like we needed to alert our readers to something,” Campbell said. “It’s important to get some information out any way we can.”
As more reporters have gotten access to Wi-Fi, the site has begun publishing accountability stories about cell service outages and the state’s slow response in providing water. Campbell said the site is sending news alerts out to readers though he acknowledged that many of them likely don’t have internet and can’t read the stories.
To reach residents, the Gannett-owned Asheville Citizen Times is manning a text messaging service, company spokesperson Carlene Cox told Poynter in an email. Residents who sign up will get updates from the paper and can send any questions they have directly to Citizen Times journalists.
Teresa Elder walks through a flooded Sandy Cove Drive, from Hurricane Helene Friday, Sept. 27, 2024 in Morganton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Radio has been vital in the wake of communications outages. Poynter faculty member Tony Elkins, who lives in Asheville, said that he has seen TV station trucks come by, but he can’t watch TV or access news sites without power or data.
“For me to get signal to look at data, I have to go to the very top of our mountain, which is at the top of our driveway,” Elkins said Monday afternoon. “I have to sit out in the road in a chair. It’s not like I can look at it easily in my house. That’s why radio is still the dominant information source.”
Elkins said he lost power early Friday. He didn’t get data service until Sunday morning. For 48 hours, the radio was his only source of communication. He recalled going radio signal by radio signal on Saturday, just trying to pick up anything he could until he found people talking about the storm.
“We’re in the mountains, we’re remote. And radio has just come through,” Elkins said. “I can’t describe it. It feels so good to hear another human’s voice.”
The stations Elkins has primarily been listening to have been Blue Ridge Public Radio and 99.9 Kiss Country. The latter is an iHeartMedia station that, along with several others in the area, was broadcasting nonstop in the wake of the storm. Radio hosts debunked misinformation and assured panicked listeners who were calling in.
The station has been a “lifeline,” Elkins said. He’s heard people call in, desperate for information about relatives they haven’t been able to reach. Others have shared pleas for necessities, like insulin and diapers.
“People are just using the radio — specifically 99.9 — to find their neighbors, find their community.”
Elkins said that he has seen people going out to their cars and listening to the radio. While out, he and his neighbors will stop each other and pass along any information they heard.
Knoepp said that at Blue Ridge Public Radio, journalists know that radio serves as a “crucial” source of information for people without cell service or Wi-Fi. As a result, the station has broken its normal format and hasn’t been taking as many NPR programs throughout the day. Instead, they’ve been broadcasting local county press conferences. The station is also running a live blog on their website.
“Everybody has been working around the clock. We don’t usually have live news throughout the day, press conferences and things like that,” Knoepp said. “We feel like it’s our job as a public service to make sure that folks have that information.”
The road to recovery will likely be long, Knoepp said. She and other reporters at her station have been trying to get statistics about fatalities, as well as information about when services will become available. Elkins said that one of the primary things his community needs is information about how to get supplies, like food, water and gas.
The answers to those questions also affect journalists. Campbell said that in between working, he spent “a good portion” of his day Monday searching for Wi-Fi, cash and gas. He knows his staff members each have their own personal crises that they’re grappling with.
“People are dealing with all sorts of stuff that is really tough to deal with, but they’re also working to get the news out to people,” Campbell said. “It’s really inspiring and really awesome to see.”
