Floodwaters rip apart homes and leave North Carolina towns caked in mud

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reported live from the town of Marshall, North Carolina, on Oct. 1, showing the damage left behind in just one of many towns affected by Helene's destructive floods.

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00:00The roar of helicopters has been echoing through the mountains of Western North Carolina today.

00:06Federal officials are preparing for a presidential flyover tomorrow to survey the damage.

00:12AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is live in Marshall. Marshall is about 20 miles northwest of Asheville

00:17and Bill, some of these homes there are a total loss and in some cases uninsured.

00:25Yeah, Jeff Bree, this is just a heartbreaking situation for so many people here

00:29in Marshall, North Carolina. On the other side of town, the floodwaters were so powerful that

00:34there are a number of buildings that are just completely gone. It's down to the concrete slab,

00:39all that's left. On this side of town, some of the apartments, some of the businesses here,

00:45they're dealing with 5, 10, even 15 feet of water that got inside the first floor, in some cases

00:51into the second floor. Now, as you can see, things have wrapped up for the evening. There's no power

00:56here, so it's going to get dark here very quickly. Most of the people that were cleaning up have

01:00cleared out, so we were able to get into town to get a closer look of everything that's just caked

01:05in mud. And you could see from our video from earlier today, there was a steady stream of

01:09families coming in from neighboring communities in the mountains here of Western North Carolina

01:14offering help. They parked near a roadblock and they walked into this town with their shovels,

01:20wheelbarrows, and other supplies to help clean up this muddy mess and offer any help to families.

01:26Josh Adams has lived here in Marshall for years. He and others knew there was a storm coming after

01:32days of torrential rain, and then Helene arrived. But Josh says no one he knows was expecting this

01:38level of devastation. It's hard to prepare for something that nobody's ever seen or heard of.

01:45It doesn't matter what kind of warnings you get. If nobody's experienced or knows anybody who has,

01:49it's hard to mentally prepare, it's hard to accept that it might happen,

01:53and it's hard to understand just how bad it could get when nobody has ever experienced it before.

01:59Nobody that's alive has ever seen it as bad as it is.

02:05Within the past hour, we just got a look inside one of the houses still standing. Look at this.

02:10The water line is at the top of their windows. The power from the water ripped apart the kitchen,

02:17tossing around the refrigerator. The man who calls this place home gave us permission to

02:21step onto his front porch to get a look inside. And guys, that's not a riverfront home. That's on

02:27the other side of this street, several feet up in elevation. That's how much water these families are

02:33dealing with. And again, we're on the side of Marshall where there's still buildings standing.

02:37They weren't hit as hard on this side of town. We can't access the other side of town where some of

02:42the buildings are just down to concrete slabs. This is just a very, very difficult situation

02:46for so many families. They tell us they still need a lot of help in Marshall.

02:51All right, Bill, thanks for that reporting. Very difficult scenes. Our hearts go out to those

02:56who are dealing with tremendous loss here, whether it's physical loss or far worse than that,

03:01the loss of human life there as some are still missing. And we have 140 as the latest count of

03:07those who have lost their lives that we're aware of at this point.

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