Hurricane Helene / Invest 97L

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Haha nice... Asheville got FUCKED up. I love that area but big schadenfreude on all the faggots (actual and metaphorical) who live there. There's not a huge amount of cool or "based" people living right in the middle of all that noise.

The stretch of 74 going down to lake lure is another story, those are hilltowns and that's where the local rednecks and geriatrics live (also tourists but tourists deserve the rope). I was just up there. Guy I know lives 10 minutes above Chimney Rock overlooking the river... he should have one hell of a story to tell once I get a hold of him, I doubt he's dead, mountain boyz don't die that easy. The riverside tourist/motel/party area around Bat Cave must be gone too if Chimney Rock washed out.

So the entire thread is going to shit down your throat for this post, and rightfully so, but I want to respond in a more detached way. Moralfag without aggression.

I won't say that it's wrong to celebrate or cheer on the deaths of those you hate. It probably is, but it's not a standard I'm going to live by. I've been cheering on the Three Gorges Dam blowing for ages. I'm also malicious about Yankees and Californians getting hit with blizzards and wildfires. Now it feels unfair that this scenario would basically happen in my backyard and a small part of me feels some guilt about it like it's my fault for wishing it on others, although I know that's not the case (I'm nobody important enough for this to be a lesson for my benefit).

But in a case like this you've got a lot of decent people being swept up in it too, and even among those faggots, contemptible as they are, are still a lot of regular people that, were they your own neighbor or friend, you would see them as a person and not as a mook for Globohomo or whatever. I just think that in a disaster like this - natural, pointless, with no moral content or lesson to it, random death mindlessly dealt by nature - even the smallest "collateral damage" outweighs whatever malice. Could be 100 Antifa-sympathizing Communist shitheads from Asheville drowned and if 1 normal local died it'd be hard to justify the exchange, because unlike a battle or something nothing was proven by this. They died for reasons that are and always will be a complete mystery to us as the answer belongs only to God.

 

[bat bat]

Residents of Black Mountain were advised today, if they had ANYWHERE else they could go, to leave. The water processing plants are contaminated and the officials don't know when they will be fixed. Officials said FEMA has no plans to address the issue "for the foreseeable future".
Water in Arden and other peripheral communities is being cut off due to contamination.
Customers in areas serviced by French Broad Electric Co Op have power and Internet restored yesterday and today.
The River Arts District is still flooded and there are still power lines and whole ass transformers in the streets.
Despite the reduced police presence since the BLM retardation, they're trying to keep people from devolving into violence at the few gas stations and grocer's open. The sounds of sirens are a constant.
Cell service is nearly non-existent in most places. For wifi, public library on Pack Square is available, password on sign out front. Fire departments all seem to have wifi for public use.
Some assholes looted the hospital; not sure what they managed to take, but I hope they contract dysentery and die slowly.
UPS begins making deliveries to accessible addresses tomorrow, other private companies to begin soon, as well. Except the Postal Service. Fuck them.
Marshall is destroyed, Chimney Rock is gone, Burnsville seems gone, Hot Springs never stood a chance. Lake Lure is a fucking mess, but not quite gone. Asheville is devastated. Hendersonville seems to be, damage-wise, between Asheville and Lake Lure.
A mom begged me for diapers for her baby.
This shit's grim.
It's been weird to realize how many people don't know how to use a chainsaw. People in the smaller mountain communities are working together, pooling resources and repairing roads, small bridges and homes. In the suburbs and cities, it feels feral. And fearful.
*Edit for spelling and to let u know I can't link or document shit because I'm a mobile fag
*Second edit: Tractor Supply near the Asheville Outlet mall is open and accepting cards, not just cash.

 

[Otterly]

We've wound up having to pool together big time, because we're just a small ass town in the middle of nowhere, and we thought the government wasn't coming to help us anytime soon

Community, knowing your neighbours, and having the tools and knowledge to use them is all that will save people in a real crisis

Officials said FEMA has no plans to address the issue "for the foreseeable future".

Isn’t this what FEMA is for? Water is critical. ‘Yeah just go somewhere else for an unspecified time we have no plans to sort it out’ is not an acceptable response. The government wants you dependent on it but then it provides no help.

People in the smaller mountain communities are working together, pooling resources and repairing roads, small bridges and homes.

As above. Self sufficiency is relentlessly mocked but here you are, doing things yourselves.

I genuinely would not want anywhere regardless of inhabitant or location to have this kind of disaster, but I do wonder what the FEMA response would be if it was the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard or some fancy pants bit of DC that got hit.
Vote accordingly. Oh wait, sorry guys we just can’t have the machines working with the flooding and all … you guys can’t vote this year.

 

[Gravemind]

Isn’t this what FEMA is for? Water is critical. ‘Yeah just go somewhere else for an unspecified time we have no plans to sort it out’ is not an acceptable response. The government wants you dependent on it but then it provides no help.

People still have any good faith in FEMA?

 

[Polystyrene Glioblastoma]

Some Nation Of Islam, north of the Mason-Dixon line nigger calling Chimney Rock, NC a sundown town in response to people talking about the devastation there. It is literally a tourism focused village.



The amount of libtard Yankees who will shit on the South knowns no bounds, also.

 

[A Cardboard Box]

A friend of mine is an emergency management coordinator deployed there under an EMAC request and reports that "fast water rescue operations are virtually complete" and that the majority of those rescue teams have been retasked to more general search and rescue missions. Additionally, he tells me that he and some others are currently trying to work out some kind of way to get reliable radio service into the areas worst affected. Their current line of thinking is potentially setting up a chain of solar and battery powered radio repeater stations.

 

[FieldPiece]

I’ve been scrolling through TikTok since I’ve got nothing else to do. There’s a couple videos from Florida, and I’ve attached one from Asheville.

Edit: houses are floating in Asheville

View attachment 6462697

Wow, the graphics in the sequel to Up are pretty realistic.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

View attachment 6471165
The fact I'm going back to my daily routine somewhat while people are still suffering like this gives me an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Shit like this really makes you understand how important it is to have more than 2 weeks of water and food prepped. Cause - they sure as shit aren't gonna come and save you.

Isn’t this what FEMA is for? Water is critical. ‘Yeah just go somewhere else for an unspecified time we have no plans to sort it out’ is not an acceptable response. The government wants you dependent on it but then it provides no help.

Yeah that's what they steal your tax dollars for and tell you its gonna do.
Reality is they just give it to their friends elsewhere who launder it and give them kickbacks. Government doesn't serve us anymore. Its questionable how much they ever did really serve us. But for now its clear they just suck our blood, sweat, and tears for their own benefit.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

None of the power companies expected this. They also do repairs in a particular order or have to request resources they don't have so the lineman sit around a lot. The damage in my family's area is so severe the power company needs to rerun lines and replace almost half the poles. They don't have the supplies for any of that The only thing they have going for them is there are enough locals clearing roads so they don't have to.

Two days before the storm hit they were predicting 12-18 inches of rain and tropical storm winds. Two whole days to start getting disaster preparation in place, lowering water levels in dams, and warning everyone to stock up and prepare to deal with flood waters. The only question was where the worst flooding would be, like the forecast on 9/25 predicted it would be a little further southwest than it actually was. But it was still calling for tropical storm winds and 8+ inches of rain in Asheville. There were going to be floods everywhere, since this was a fairly predictable storm. Even if North Carolina got mostly spared and South Carolina or wherever got hit this hard instead, it would still have been helpful because this was going to be bad enough to require a multi-state response.

 

[Velanna]

Another thing to think about is people getting life saving medication. I had to work this past weekend and it was awful. A lot of pharmacies were closed and we couldn't transfer prescriptions that were already filled at another pharmacy in our chain before that pharmacy lost power. It just wouldn't let us. So we had to pray that they had another prescription either stored or had remaining refills and we couldn't bill insurance. We also had to transfer a lot of prescriptions from the Carolinas (granted that they were open) because people were trapped here. If it was a c2 medication like pain medication that couldn't be transfered at all and doctors offices were not opened on the weekend so it wasn't able to be called in.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Keeping the power on is unironically one of the things Florida is really good at but it requires having a lot of people clearing the space around the above ground lines all year round and putting as many lines underground as you can. It's not really an expense that would "make sense" to a power company in Appalachia, they'd just being paying a lot of people to stand around most years and would have to pass on the costs to the customer. It's sort of doubly unfortunate that Florida got swept up in this because we lend out our excess capacity in line techs to other states effected by storms but based on the destruction to the big bend they have a lot of work to do down here.

 

[A Cardboard Box]

Isn’t this what FEMA is for? Water is critical.

Update on this. I don't know who made the call, but word on the street is that the Marines out of Lejeune are loaning their water purification systems to the relief effort. These things are the best in the business. They can run on generator power and, depending on the size of the unit, can purify between 100 and 500 gallons an hour.

 

[ovenmath]

Anyone know of any volunteer operations open next weekend? I checked the operation airdrop, and it looks like they are running through to the end of the week but not after.

 

[Gef Mongoose]

I know of some local groups just now working out on helping Louisiana folks after Hurricane Francine a few weeks ago.

The videos and pictures out of NC make the Francine aftermath look like nothing.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Update on this. I don't know who made the call, but word on the street is that the Marines out of Lejeune are loaning their water purification systems to the relief effort. These things are the best in the business. They can run on generator power and, depending on the size of the unit, can purify between 100 and 500 gallons an hour.

>Camp Lejeune
>water purification

Aw hell nah

 

[A Cardboard Box]

>Camp Lejeune
>water purification

Aw hell nah

Beggars and choosers, friend.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Isn’t this what FEMA is for?

FEMA is just a coordinating body. It has shockingly little in the way of "boots on the ground" capability to do anything. At best they are bag men, moving cash around. So for example, a big issue right now is sourcing Electric Poles. The Local Utility is having a hard time both finding enough of them, and then getting them shipped to the area needed. FEMA can contract purchase for said electric poles, possibly even from as far afield as Canada or Europe, and have them shipped in. Additionally they can contract linesmen from States like Texas and then pay to have them brought in to help set up the new poles. What you will never see is FEMA trucks running around distributing supplies or doing anything really.

Disaster management is inherently a State level thing, with the Federal Government financing things if the disaster is big enough to require multi state response. A better question should be why North Carolina was caught so flat foot. Tennessee got rocked hard too, but the situation there doesn't seem quite as slapdash as in NC. For example, Tennessee was very quick to call in help from Virginia, which is probably why the body count in Unicoi County isn't as high as in Buncombe. They clearly had a better grasp on how things were going then North Carolina did.

 

[Diabeetus69]

A better question should be why North Carolina was caught so flat foot. Tennessee got rocked hard too, but the situation there doesn't seem quite as slapdash as in NC. For example, Tennessee was very quick to call in help from Virginia, which is probably why the body count in Unicoi County isn't as high as in Buncombe. They clearly had a better grasp on how things were going then North Carolina did.

As someone who has lived in the Carolinas for the better part of 40 years, I can safely say NC was not caught "flat footed".
This has NEVER happened before. If someone were to say 2 weeks ago that a borderline Cat 1/Tropic Storm was going to actually hit Asheville, NC, you'd have told them they were crazy.
Sure, the mountains get rain and storms all the time, and sure, things flood. But that is all very localized. One side of a mountain could be getting pounded by rain...the other side, dry as a bone. But nobody had any idea what happened on Friday was a remote possibility.

Saying NC was caught flat footed is like claiming that Miami was caught flat footed because they weren't prepared for the freak blizzard that dumped a foot of snow on them. This shit has never happened before and nobody would have thought it would be a week ago.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Saying NC was caught flat footed is like claiming that Miami was caught flat footed because they weren't prepared for the freak blizzard that dumped a foot of snow on them. This shit has never happened before and nobody would have thought it would be a week ago.

There's flatfooted "we never thought this kind of storm could hit" and there's flatfooted "we have no emergency response for anything of this magnitude". The first is excusable, the second is kind of not.

Of course, the dirty secret is most state emergency response setups are actually federally funded through side-grants (check out small towns, most pay about 10-30% for the firetruck, the rest covered by a federal grant). If the state or towns aren't hip to the jive or know how to get those grants, they can suffer.

People think the government is all set and ready to go for all sorts of things; they're not. Basically all they have is lots of money that can but doesn't always slosh around.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

this was going to be bad enough to require a multi-state response.

The problem is they predicted Florida to be hit the hardest and for it to hit Atlanta instead . Places to the east of Atlanta expected thunder storm winds and rain instead of hurricane force. Even if they pulled resources elsewhere and didn't send theirs to Florida, the damage is on such a large scale that minimums viable recovery would still be slow, especially in the mountains. Hopefully next time they evacuate whats left of Western NC.

But nobody had any idea what happened on Friday was a remote possibility.

I don't think people understand how varied the terrain and flora are in the US and how they impact the outcomes of abnormal weather.