Members of the Illinois Water Rescue 1 team search through debris for survivors in the aftermath of Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Photo / Jabin Botsford, the Washington Post
In the beginning, Jessica Meidinger tried to keep her hopes up.
She tried to believe that her mother, Kim Ashby, was just stranded somewhere in the storm-ravaged mountains of western North Carolina.
She tried to put her faith in the rescue crews who spent each day scouring the riverbanks near Ashby’s now-demolished home. She tried to imagine her phone ringing with good news, tried to picture the moment when she and her mum were finally reunited.
But by Monday, 10 days after her mother was seen being swept away by Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters, Meidinger’s dwindling hope had given way to a brutal realisation. That was the day she provided investigators with her mother’s toothbrush and a swab of her own cheek so they would have samples of Ashby’s DNA.
“The implication of that is hard to think through,” Meidinger said. It meant searchers thought they would need to identify a body. It meant there was almost no chance that Ashby was still alive.
Meidinger’s mother is one of a number of people who remain missing two weeks after Helene battered the United States’ Southeast, leaving a trail of destruction and loss across six states.
As of Friday local time, the Washington Post was able to confirm that at least 16 hurricane-related missing-person investigations were open in five counties in North Carolina and Tennessee. But that figure is likely just a fraction of the total who are still unaccounted for, as many of the hardest-hit jurisdictions do not report the number of missing residents.
The search for Ashby, a maths teacher and grandmother-of-three who vanished from the tiny town of Elk Park, illustrates why these cases have been so difficult to resolve, even in an era of drones, cellphones, and satellite imagery.
In much of southern Appalachia, the hurricane wiped out communications systems and obliterated roads, cutting residents off from the outside world. Search crews have had to navigate rugged terrain made even more treacherous by swollen creeks, muddy mountainsides and massive piles of debris. Victims who fell into the fast-moving floodwaters could have been carried many kilometres downstream, rescuers say.
Some of the missing may yet be discovered trapped in remote locations or lost in the shuffle at shelters. But as recovery efforts extend into their third week, officials and family members acknowledge that the likelihood of additional rescues grows slimmer every day.
For many, the search for survivors has now become a quest for closure.
“It’s sad to say, but I just hope we find her body,” Meidinger said. “Because not having a body, not having a for-sure resolution, that just keeps the hope alive. And hope can really hurt sometimes.”
The cabin overlooking the Elk River, in one of North Carolina’s westernmost counties, fulfilled a longtime dream for Ashby.
She and her husband, Rod, had spent years constructing a holiday spot where they could host their kids and grandchildren, and this summer they finally invited their big and boisterous family to celebrate at the completed house. The days were filled with fly-fishing expeditions and trips to the local theme park and dancing to the ‘90s country music that Ashby loved.
“She’s kind of the linchpin of our family,” Meidinger said. “Always making sure we all got together and remained close.”
Rod Ashby had designed the building to sit well above the area’s historical floodplain, with a ground-floor garage whose gates could be opened to allow rushing water to flow through. With heavy rains from Helene forecast on September 26, the Ashbys drove over from their home in Sanford, North Carolina, to ensure the gates were raised and the cabin was secure.
When Meidinger didn’t hear from her mother the following day, she assumed it was simply because communication lines had been severed by the storm.
But on Saturday morning, Meidinger’s aunt received a Facebook message from one of the Ashbys’ neighbours. They had spotted Rod running frantic along the opposite riverbank.
“I need you to get in touch with my family,” Rod shouted at the neighbour across the swollen river. “I’m okay, but Kim is missing.”
It’s impossible to determine exactly how many people were reported lost in Helene’s aftermath – or how many haven’t been found.
The American Red Cross has received more than 9000 reunification requests from family members searching for loved ones, but the non-profit declined to say how many of those requests had been resolved. The federal Government does not maintain a comprehensive list of storm-related missing-person reports, and the majority of counties do not publicly release those numbers.
Lillian Govus, director of communications for Buncombe County, where Helene’s greatest damage occurred, said rescuers are still working on conducting welfare checks at the homes of people who haven’t been heard from. With thousands of residents still without power, and cellphone reception spotty across much of the region, going door to door is the only way to determine who is truly missing, she said. Until that operation is complete, the county will not say how many residents remain unaccounted for.
The challenge is even greater in more remote areas like McDowell County, east of Asheville. There, the Indiana Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue team spent last weekend working with cadaver dogs seeking possible human remains amid the wreckage of uprooted forests and mangled homes.
“One of the biggest challenges we’ve had in this community is just getting access to it,” explained Ryan Cusack, a canine specialist who has been with rescue team for 11 years.
“These mountainside and hillside roads are washed out. There’s bridges that are entirely gone. Cellphone coverage and infrastructure has just been absolutely devastated. So getting a true count of how many people are missing or not missing has been a really big challenge for this one.”
But every day, Facebook pages and community forums see new posts from anxious friends and relatives: “Has anyone seen David?” “This is my son.” “Pray for my sister and her husband.”
Many of those whose loved ones can’t find them were vulnerable long before the storm hit. Some were homeless, according to the posts from family members. Others struggled with mental illness or had physical disabilities.
For days, Brittani Sinski has called homeless shelters and posted online in search of information about her brother, Timothy Morris. He had been living at a shelter in Kansas for the past several months when he told his family he wanted to come back to Florida. They suspect he was hitchhiking through the path of the storm when Helene hit.
Though Morris didn’t have a cellphone, he always checked in with his mother by visiting libraries or borrowing a phone from a stranger. But Julia Foster said she hasn’t heard from her son since he left Kansas in late September.
“He just hasn’t called,” Foster said. “I don’t want to think the worst. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Ashby’s brother-in-law, Walter Brown, was at a East Carolina University tailgate when word reached him that Kim had disappeared in the storm. Within hours, he was in a car heading west. A veteran homicide investigator, Brown knew his law enforcement credentials would grant him access to the disaster zone, and he wanted to be helpful.
Brown’s first attempt to reach his relatives after arriving in Elk Park was stymied when the road leading to their home ended in a washed out bridge. Returning to the town centre, he came across someone who had seen the Ashbys’ cabin floating downriver. The neighbour offered to lead Brown along a narrow trail called “scaly branch”, which climbed over a mountain and into the valley where the Ashbys lived.
“You can’t describe the destruction,” Brown said of the denuded landscape. The hillsides were strewn with downed trees, the riverbank clogged with debris piles. “The water just steamrolled through.”
After a full day’s hard hiking, Brown found himself across the river from the home where Rod had taken shelter. It took the battered and shaken survivor a moment to recognise who had come to rescue him.
“Then he stopped and said my name, and he just started to cry,” Brown recalled. The long-time investigator had to bite his lip to keep from crying too.
From Rod, the family learned what had transpired during the storm, Meidinger said. Overnight, a tractor-trailer had become stuck on the bridge just downstream from the cabin, creating a makeshift dam. The stopped-up river began to spill over its banks, reaching as high as the Ashbys’ garage. Realising they were no longer safe, the couple started packing their belongings to evacuate.
But then the bridge suddenly gave way, causing water to gush downstream. A piece of debris rammed into one of the pillars supporting the house. And before the Ashbys could flee through a window, the entire house slid into the river, spinning wildly in the floodwaters.
With the building disintegrating on top of them, Rod and Kim clung to each other. They were searching for a spot where they could pull themselves to safety when they were struck by a tree. Kim fell from Rod’s arms, and the last he saw of her, she was being carried away in the torrent.
Rod eventually escaped from the floodwaters, and was able to hike nearly 16km, barefoot, to the home where he was eventually found. The fact that he had survived buoyed Meidinger’s hopes. Her mum was strong, someone who had battled breast cancer and delighted in ocean swims.
Plus, Meidinger was in her third trimester of pregnancy. She knew how much Ashby loved being a grandmother. She knew her mum would do anything to survive and see that child born.
Meidinger committed herself to bringing attention to Elk Park, a community more than 160km from Asheville that remained isolated for days after the storm. She gave television interviews, posted on Facebook, sought help from her college rugby community.
And the support poured in. Strangers sent prayers from Texas and Ohio. Ashby’s students from more than a decade ago reached out to say she had been their favourite teacher, that she had changed their lives.
By the seventh day after the hurricane hit, the search effort that Brown was helping to organise had swollen to dozens of people. One of the Ashbys’ neighbours, Fabricio Godoi, volunteered every day to guide rescuers along the area’s steep slopes and hidden trails.
Helicopters helped transport equipment and cadaver dogs to the area. Teams from across North Carolina and as far away as Connecticut helped scour the river, from the spot where Ashby was last seen all the way to the border.
All they could find of Ashby was her soaked and mud-caked purse, her wallet and driver’s license still inside.
It increasingly looks as though Ashby had been carried many kilometres down river, possibly into Watauga Lake on the Tennessee side of the border, Brown said. This week, he began working with authorities from Carter County, Tennesse, to search the terrain they know best.
But the long-time investigator is well aware of the odds they face. If Ashby was killed, the warm weather and wet conditions could make her body difficult to recognise. If she sank into the debris-clogged lake, her remains may never be uncovered.
For the rest of Ashby’s family, the uncertainty is excruciating. Unable to keep imagining their reunion, Meidinger finds her thoughts straying to her mother’s last moments. Was she scared? Was it painful? Was it quick?
The questions keep her from thinking about what comes next: explaining what happened to her 3-year-old son. Giving birth to her younger child without Ashby there. Helping Rod to keep on living alone.
“Our family is very much stuck,” Meidinger said. “Life is going on around us. We see it. But we’re completely paused.
“I don’t know how we’re going to move past this,” she added. “But I do know the only way we will start to heal is if we find her. We have to find her.”
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