(NewsNation) — One man trekked 11 miles to check on his parents after Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina, and he didn’t hear from them for two days.
Sam Perkins said on “NewsNation Now” that the situation in Ashville is “dire.”
“Getting supplies up there, getting people in or out, is going to be really difficult to do for a while, because all the routes, one way or another, have washed out, bridges and roads landslides,” Perkins said. “They’re really sitting on an island right now in the area between Asheville and Boone.”
Why was Asheville hit so hard by Helene?
After 48 hours of not hearing from his parents, Perkins traveled as close as he could to them, getting a ride from a local for part of the way. Then, he hiked for three and a half hours up a mountain.
“The more and more that I went up the mountain, the worse it got,” Perkins said. Mud was pretty deep from the landslides, he said, and he had to crawl through some trees like a jungle gym.
When he got to his parents, Perkins said they were OK, but completely trapped in the house by fallen trees, and their road had been washed out.