Weeks after Hurricane Helene caused widespread devastation in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, life is anything but normal for many rural communities.
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00:00Relief efforts continue weeks after Helene's devastating impacts.
00:04That's right. Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby joins us live tonight from Butler in northeast Tennessee,
00:09just over the North Carolina state line. Aaron, I understand getting around this area has been
00:14pretty tricky due to the damage to the roads and bridges. Give us an update.
00:20Yeah, good evening guys. If tonight doesn't prove how important it is to follow up with
00:24the stories, I don't know what does. Because back in North Carolina, a little closer to Asheville,
00:28there is almost a little bit of a sense of normality. Some of the cell phone coverage
00:32has been restored, and a lot of the internet connections have been restored. That's not
00:36the case around on this part. They still are about cell service on both Verizon and AT&T,
00:42but the local church here, the Little Milken Baptist Church, they have free Wi-Fi here
00:46for the storm victims to communicate with the outside world. And they actually had to make
00:50this makeshift bridge because their main bridge was completely taken out and washed away,
00:54and this is their compromise. So some of that creativity is coming into good use today
00:59to help along with those storm victims. Wow, Aaron, and this leads into our next question.
01:04Earlier, you were in Asheville, where you shot some incredible video showing the
01:09deforestation. Can you tell us more about that issue as well? Just some amazing video caught
01:15earlier. Yeah, absolutely. That was the first time I've actually seen something to that caliber. In
01:23the top of the mountains around in the Asheville area looks like something that I would see with
01:28tornado damage of EF3 plus type caliber just buzz sawing the top of those mountains. And that's
01:33what's been hampering a lot of efforts to get the Blue Ridge Parkway open to tourists that still
01:38won't come through. Also to get that supplies up to storm victims in those smaller communities up
01:44into the mountains, which they're still today. Some people still stranded up there, and a lot
01:49of the nation starting backlog because they can't take big truckloads like some of the other
01:53communities down in the lower oceans. They have to take it up by four-wheeler or side-by-side,
01:57so it's creating a lot of complications for this area still. And we're almost a month
02:02since landfall with those lingering effects. All right, Aaron Rigsby, thank you so much for
02:08that update. He's live right now in Butler, Tennessee. We'll check in with him coming up
02:12because this recovery process, as you can see with that widespread devastation, it's going to take
02:17weeks, if not months, for some of these communities to rebound as we look at the
02:22after effects from both Hurricanes Helene and Milton.