MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Biden visits North Carolina today, where recovery has been slow since the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through the area last weekend, causing damaging flooding.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The death toll is rising across the Southeast. Tens of thousands of people remain without electricity or water or cell service and in some places all three.
MARTIN: NPR's Jennifer Ludden is in nearby eastern Tennessee. Good morning, Jennifer.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Can you just help us see the challenge here? I'm thinking one reason is - just to put it simply - this was just a massive storm.
LUDDEN: Exactly. It hit multiple states, you know, across hundreds of miles, and we're talking mountainous terrain. There are winding rivers, and they've stayed at high levels for days. Major highways are ripped up, and it's just been hard for authorities to get places. Now, the Biden administration says there are several thousand federal responders on the ground, hundreds more on the way. First responders are just pleading for people to be patient, but, you know, there is frustration. Residents don't know everything behind the scenes and feel that they've been left to cope with this unprecedented disaster on their own.
MARTIN: And for people in that situation, how are they coping?
LUDDEN: You know, there are a lot of food and water distribution sites. But I got to say that the scale of regular people pitching in to help is striking. I met Matthew Jackson, who'd set up a roadside tent in Newport, Tenn. He'd shut down the pizzeria he owns in Knoxville an hour away and spent two days grilling up hundreds of hot dogs, burgers and chicken sandwiches to give out.
MATTHEW JACKSON: I'm from Florida. I've been through a lot of these. I've seen this a lot of times. These people up here have never been through something like this, so they don't understand what it takes, what it's going to be, how long it's going to last.
LUDDEN: In one neighborhood that was hit hard by flooding, residents told me strangers had come by to help haul out their furniture and scrub away the mud, and one young man was using his forklift to take people's furniture to the dump. Just across the state line, a search and rescue official in North Carolina yesterday urged everyone to do this kind of thing. He said this disaster is just so big. Neighbors helping neighbors is the only way to get through it.
MARTIN: It's just a hard thing to even sort of estimate, but, Jennifer, can you give us any sense of a timeline for getting back basic amenities that people have been doing without?
LUDDEN: No one is really doing that, no. It does get a bit better every day. More people have power. Officials are working to repair cellphone towers, putting in temporary ones if - where it's going to take a while. You know, but it could be weeks before even the water comes back. A lot of infrastructure was just destroyed. Our colleagues at Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, N.C., report that a regional health center is urging later-term pregnant women and also parents of newborns to evacuate this area because it says the water situation is just too unsafe.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Jennifer Ludden in Newport, Tenn. Jennifer, thank you so much.
LUDDEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
