Horrifying video captured the moment a mudslide shredded down a hill and tore through a North Carolina family’s home, washing away half of it as Hurricane Helene brought widespread devastation to the region.
The dramatic footage taken Friday showed a deluge of mud and debris rushing down the incline toward the home in the small town of Boone about two hours north of Charlotte in the Blue Ridge Mountains, as the ‘cane barreled through the western portion of the state.
A surge of mud can be seen pouring down the hill before inundating the home at the bottom of the property, wrecking a garage and several cars.
“My car is gone,” a man can be heard saying in the clip as a woman replies, “I’m OK. It’s OK,” according to the video published by the BBC.
“Everything’s gone. It’s all gone,” the man says as the woman continues to try to reassure him.
A GoFundMe set up by the daughter of the homeowners said their insurance “does not cover landslides.”
The daughter noted her parents were still without power but that they had food and water stored and were otherwise OK.
There have been reports of widespread destruction in the wake of Helene — and at least 133 related deaths in six Southeastern states have been attributed to the storm, which wreaked havoc over the weekend from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.
Catastrophic flooding in the Asheville area of western North Carolina left at least 40 people dead alone as of Monday, with survivors in the area’s remote mountain towns reporting seeing bodies of victims stuck in trees.
Powerful rains washed away whole communities in the region, with floodwaters and mudslides burying or dissolving roadways — leaving scores of residents cut off from rescue crews.
Emergency workers have been trying to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the tourism hub of Asheville.
Local Mike Toberer, a trainer at Mountain Mule Packer Ranch, said he decided to bring a dozen of his mules out into the wreckage to deliver food, water and diapers to blocked-off mountainous areas.
“We’ll take our chainsaws, and we’ll push those mules through,” he said, noting that each beast can carry about 200 pounds of supplies.
President Biden is expected to travel to North Carolina on Wednesday to meet with officials and take an aerial tour of Asheville after pledging the federal government would provide help in the Southeast for “as long as it takes.”
As officials worked to reach stranded residents, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall warned Monday that as many as 600 people had not been accounted for since the storm struck, suggesting the death toll may rise.
With Post wires
