Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up for Dispatches. This is a newsletter that spotlights misconduct across the country, where you receive your stories in your inbox every week.
When Hurricane Helen cultivated the Southeast last September, it caused more inland deaths than hurricanes in recorded history. The per capita death toll occurred in Yancey County. This is the spread of North Carolina’s rugged black mountain countryside, ruined by flash floods and landslides.
On Monday, we released a story explaining what happened at Yancey. Our intention was to show how, through these horrifying events, a very accurate weather warning was harmed and failed to reach the most people. And it shows that inland communities are not prepared for a storm that is as devastating as coastal storms. None of Yancey received an evacuation order. And many people, including those living in high-risk areas who care for young children and frail elderly people, did not run away because they did not see any clear signs of urgency from the county.
Helen’s Unprecedented Warning
There’s a lot written about Helen, but few focus on evacuation orders. During the four months of reporting, we found that local officials across Mountain County in western North Carolina were significantly different. The nation also lags behind others in terms of what county-level emergency managers need, and lawmakers have found that Helen has suspended efforts to map landslide dangers in the hardest hit county for almost a decade.
Five important findings from the report include:
1. Some counties have issued evacuation orders in harm’s way. Others didn’t.
To determine which cities and counties conveyed the evacuation order, more than 30 North Carolina jurisdictions shared with residents in the wake of the storm reviewed more than 500 social media posts and other types of messaging. We compared it to Roy Cooper, a letter sent to then President Joe Biden, and wanted quick disaster relief.
By the day before Helen hit, September 26th, three counties near Yancey had issued forced evacuations, and at least five counties had issued voluntary evacuation orders, targeting people living near certain dams and rivers.
McDowell County, southeast of Yancey, took particularly robust action to warn residents about the storm, including issuing both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders long enough for people to leave. Henderson County, southwest of Yancey, targeted voluntary evacuation orders for one in 500 residents who live in flood plants each year. The direction was clear.
Please contact us
I’m continuing to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Helen in western North Carolina, and I’d like to know. To share, leave a voicemail at 828-201-2738.
Yancey and at least four other nearby counties also did not issue evacuation orders. Yancey Emergency Manager Jeff Howell said he doubted that the county commissioner would support the issued order, or that local residents would listen to them given the local culture and silly culture of government rights, particularly the government’s obligations regarding property rights. However, some Yancey residents said they have left or at least are better prepared.
Local officials have been repeatedly warned, including what they said would be the worst weather phenomenon “in modern times,” but some argued that the storm’s violent nature was unprecedented so they couldn’t prepare it.
It turns out that inland mountain communities are far too often planning to use evacuation to use evacuation ahead of devastating storms like Helen. For example, some Yancey officials said they didn’t know where people were heading in the face of an unprecedented onslaught of rain and wind.
In recent years, people who have died in the US from hurricane freshwater floods have died much more people than coastal rainwater. This is a dramatic reversal from 10 years ago. This is primarily due to improved evacuation along the coast.
Several eastern states, including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, have adopted a plan called Know Your Zone to carry out target evacuations when the storm approaches. However, despite the temperatures in the ocean causing strong storms, these plans are often not extended as much. A powerful storm that is not a hurricane can also be fatal. In February, the storm killed at least 24 people in Kentucky. More deaths from other storms.
2. Disaster messages vary widely from county to county.
To understand how local officials communicated disaster warnings to residents, we compiled a timeline of alerts and warnings sent by the National Weather Service and washed social media posts from the same period that more than three dozen jurisdictions share with residents. We have found a huge gap.
In addition to issuing evacuation orders, for example, McDowell County issued flyers in English and Spanish, warnings of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” A lot has been done.
And about 36 hours before Helen hit, the Haywood County sheriff warned in a short video message that “a devastating and life-threatening event is approaching,” one of the largest populations in western North Carolina. The emergency services director standing by him emphasized, “This message is urgent.” The sheriff then asked residents from that night to “plan or prepare to leave the lowlands or areas threatened by floods.” He finished: “Please, ask for safety – and do so now.”
Almost a day later, as Helen closed, the Yancey country officials were among those who used less directional language. In a Facebook post, she asked residents to “prepare to move up high as quickly as possible,” and advised them to go elsewhere as the last time they left before dusk is over, saying, “Now is the time to make plans.” In one post, they softened the message, adding, “This information is not something that no one can scare.”
Propublica interviewed dozens of Yancey survivors. Many people, looking back, said they were looking for clearer orders from leaders.
3. Unlike some nearby states, North Carolina does not require training for local emergency managers.
At the heart of evacuation are emergency managers, lesser-known civil servants, often tasked with preparing their own territory for potential disasters. However, the education and training requirements for these posts vary widely from state to community.
Please contact us
We will continue to report on Helen’s aftermath to understand lessons that will better prepare our community and local emergency managers for the future storm, as well as how reconstruction efforts are being developed. If you are a Helen survivor or an emergency response in North Carolina and would like to share tips with us, please contact us by email [email protected].
Yancey’s emergency manager was working seven years ago after Helen’s long, robust Army career. However, he had no experience in emergency management. For the past few years he had sought more help from the county, but by the time the storm arrived it was still only him and part-time employees.
Florida recently enacted a law that requires minimum training, experience and education for county emergency managers since 2026. Georgia requires emergency managers to obtain state emergency management certification within six months. However, North Carolina does not require specific training from local emergency managers.
4. North Carolina has launched a county-by-county landslide risk investigation, but strong interest has gotten in the way.
More than 20 years ago, North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring 19 mountain counties to map landslide dangers. They dumped more than 27 inches of rain after two hurricanes drenched the mountains, causing at least 85 landslides and multiple deaths.
But a few years later, after only four of these counties were mapped, the majority of Republican lawmakers handed over to real estate agents and developers. They suspended the program, cut funds, and fired six geologists working on it.
Almost ten years later, in 2018, lawmakers began more landslide deaths with more deaths. However, it takes at least a year to map one county. So, by the time Helen hit, Yancey and the other four hadn’t mapped the path of storm destruction yet.
Without this detailed danger mapping, emergency managers and residents of these areas would have lacked a detailed assessment of the risks to certain areas to plan before landslides robbed the mountains and killed far more people. US geological surveys have so far identified 2,015 Helen-induced landslides in western North Carolina.
Geologists who employed the project have almost completed their McDowell County mapping. They would have finished it last year, but Helen derailed their work for a while.
5. There was no comprehensive effort to examine lessons learned from Helen and determine how the county would prevent deaths from future inland storms.
Helen left many lessons to learn among inland communities on the path of increasingly toxic storms. But as North Carolina understands how to induce millions of dollars to reconstruction aid, there has been no national investigation into regional preparation so far.
The Yancey County board president said he hopes the county will do so later, but for now the official is focusing on rebuilding the efforts.
A review commissioned by North Carolina Emergency Management examined its own actions and how its staff interacted with local officials. The agency found a severe understaffing. However, they did not look into such preparation issues, such as evacuation planning or training requirements for local emergency managers.
