Hundreds still considered missing after Helene : NPR

Turbo Tetterton found out Sunday night that people outside her storm-beaten neighborhood in Asheville, N.C., were reporting her missing after no one could reach her following Hurricane Helene’s destructive path through her mountain community.

“I just got online and saw that a lot of people were looking for me, which is heartwarming, amidst all this heartbreak,” Tetterton told NPR.

Tetterton and several of her Asheville neighbors were using Wi-Fi from a hot spot trailer provided by county officials to help get residents back online. Some contacted friends and family for the first time in days. Others called out of work or tried to apply for federal aid.

Tetterton logged in and was inundated with messages like, “Hey, have you heard from this person? Hey, I haven’t heard from that person. Are they OK? Do they have power? Does she have water? Are you alive?” she recounted tearfully.

County officials hope that as more people come to hot spots like that trailer, they will reconnect with loved ones and get off the long list of people missing after Helene.

Devastating floods left widespread destruction in western North Carolina, and at least 600 people remain unaccounted for in Buncombe County alone. Search and rescue teams are still out looking for people in the county’s remote mountain towns. In Tennessee, officials said about 100 people remained missing as of Monday afternoon.

As of Tuesday, the storm had killed more than 150 people across six states, according to The Associated Press.

Among the missing are employees from a plastics plant in Erwin, Tennessee. After intense rain Friday, Impact Plastics says it dismissed employees after its parking lot flooded and the plant lost power. Some media reports allege that those employees were threatened with termination if they left the building or that they otherwise didn’t understand they were allowed to leave. Impact Plastics denies that any threat was made and says a bilingual employee explained the situation to workers.

Relatives of some Latino workers told NBC that floodwaters quickly surrounded the plant, trapping them and carrying employees away. Several employees are missing or confirmed dead. Impact Plastics said in a news release that it called for help and that a National Guard helicopter rescued five workers. The company said it is “devastated by the tragic loss of great employees.”

While rescue teams continue looking for missing individuals, family members have turned to social media to get the word out. A community-sourced list with almost 2,000 names of people thought missing was created. Since Helene hit, many names have gone from “missing” to “found.” Family and friends are using a public Facebook page to post photos and details of their missing loved ones from east Tennessee and western North Carolina.

For North Carolina:

• To report a missing person, individuals should call North Carolina 211 or 1-888-892-1162 if calling from outside the state, according to Blue Ridge Public Radio.
• You can find more resources for reporting someone missing on Blue Ridge Public Radio’s website.

For Tennessee:

• The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has established a hotline for the public to report a missing person: 1-800-TBI-FIND. Find more information here.

Additional resources:

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden contributed to this report.