A man from North Carolina says that Hurricane Helene killed eleven members of his family.
More than 230 people have died so far after Hurricane Helene hit six southern states, including Jesse Craig’s home state of North Carolina. Helene brought heavy rain, flooding, mudslides, and a lot of damage. Craig’s mother, father, aunt, uncle, great-aunt, great-uncle, cousins, and second cousins were among the dead.
Fairview, North Carolina, is where the Craig family mostly lived. It’s about 12 miles southeast of Asheville. Some of the hardest hit cities and towns in western North Carolina were Fairview and Asheville, as well as others in Buncombe County. On September 28, county officials called the floods “biblical devastation.”
“It’s unrecognizable now, but [Fairview] is where I was born and raised,” Jesse Craig told WTVD, an ABC station in Durham, on October 8. He also said that his family had lived in the area for 80 years and that people there sometimes called it “Craigtown.”
Helene caused a mudslide that destroyed several houses in Fairview and the people who lived there.
“It will never make sense to us. It’s our town and neighborhood, you know. “It might not be the same again,” Jesse Craig said.
People in the community are coming together to support Jesse Craig and his wife MeKenzie Craig. They have also started an online fundraiser to help pay for the funeral and medical bills for other family members who are still in the hospital after the storm.
The Craigs told that they will keep spreading the word about how bad Helene was and that they are determined to rebuild Fairview.
“We don’t want people to forget in a few months.” “This won’t work for a week or two,” MeKenzie Craig said.
“We have to be in it for the long haul,” said Jesse Craig. It will take years of work to try to fix this and make it look like it did before.