When Hurricane Helene hit the big bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast, it had absorbed a tremendous amount of energy from the super warm waters of the Gulf Coast becoming unusually wide and powerful. As it moved quickly inland it didn’t encounter dry soil conditions that generally rob hurricanes of their strength. Warm rains preceded it by a few days, so Helene was met by warm, wet soil until it hit the mountains of western North Carolina.
There it dumped all of the moisture it had collected from the Gulf. Months worth of rain came down in three days resulting in devastating floods and mudslides.
To avoid the deaths that these floods caused, the county authorities of Buncombe County, the county which includes Asheville, would have had to arrange for evacuations based on flood zones. They were indeed aware that a “flood event called Helene” was headed their way.
But the flood zone maps for Buncombe were last updated in 2010 (with updates scheduled for 2026), and no evacuation routes had been established in an area where most roads are narrow and twisty.
An areawide notification system was also missing. Even the limited, last moment notices given were only in English, despite 6% of the county’s population being Spanish-speaking.
The authorities decided that people staying put was the safest way to respond to the storm.
It wasn’t!