“It’s that mountaineering spirit:” The Mitchell County community is showing resilience in recovery

MITCHELL COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) – To the rest of the state, country and world, Mitchell County is effectively a black hole, with little information going out and even less coming in.

Communities are cut off from their cities. People are still missing.

Faced with the unknown and the inability to obtain information, there is only one word to describe it.

Caught.

“It feels absolutely lonely and you don't know what's going on in the rest of the world and it's devastating,” Vanessa Miller said.

Miller and her neighbors were trapped behind five trees for three days.

She spray-painted the words “trapped” on the largest tree in Spruce Pine closest to the roadway.

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“We were just hoping that someone would stop paying us or whatever to help us get out of here,” Miller said. “It took a whole day just to get the four hickory trees out of the way.”

Unfortunately, Mitchell County's problems are exponentially larger than four hickory trees.

“Basically our county has been cut off since this storm system came through on Friday,” said Allen Cook, the county manager. “Mitchell County has had historic flooding for 500 years.”

Multiple fatalities, landslides, erosion, mass power outages, water and sewage systems have been completely destroyed and there is virtually no cell service.

“From an overall incident response perspective, the extent of the damage here in Mitchell County is very reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina,” said Russell Shultz, an incident commander from Louisiana. “As victims of Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago, we know there will be a new normal for the citizens of Mitchell County.

Crews are in rescue and recovery mode at the same time.

“At this point, accessibility was our biggest obstacle,” said Chad Roberson, another incident commander from Louisiana. “There are at least six or seven communities – areas where there was flooding, initially trees were cut down in those communities, which made it difficult to get rescuers to those areas.”

Roberson said 70% of structures in Mitchell County were affected by Helene.

“There are a lot of places that have completely disappeared,” Miller said.

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County Manager Cook estimates it will take weeks at best for some people in the county to have power and water back. But for most people it will take months.

“They have to airdrop poles to get the poles into the ground — digging the holes by hand,” Cook said.

There is no timeline for cell service repair.

Cook said the county gives daily radio updates at 2:70 p.m. and needs generators, oxygen and Starlink.

They (out-of-state consultants) embraced Mitchell County, so we were very grateful for them coming to our county,” Cook said. “It’s all heart, it’s all self-sufficiency. It is the mountaineering spirit that is expressed here.

Linda Pitman has that mountaineering spirit; She is a disaster relief expert with decades of experience.

“I went all the way to Puerto Rico, to Alaska, to Florida and to Georgia. Wherever there is a need, we go,” she said.

This time it was home.

“They know we’re leaving,” Pitman said. “They never knew what we did, and now they see firsthand what we do and they’re in awe.”

After Helene's death, she works in the parking lot in front of the church where her brother is pastor, half a mile from her home.

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At the other end of town, on Locust Street, the cleanup continues.

“Hef's belongs to us, me and my brother,” Jason Hefner said.

He had six to eight feet of water in his restaurant; it was almost a total loss.

He thought he would have to sort it out himself.

Not in Mitchell County.

“They didn’t ask any questions. “They just went straight into the restaurant and started picking up trash, shoveling mud and working,” Hefner said. “We don’t even know their names, they just come in and get to work with us straight away.”

We need to pick up the pieces and move on, and that's all you can do. That’s all you can do,” Miller said.