AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reported live from the town of Marshall, North Carolina, on Oct. 1, showing the damage left behind in just one of many towns affected by Helene's destructive floods.
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00:00The roar of helicopters has been echoing through the mountains of Western North Carolina today.
00:06Federal officials are preparing for a presidential flyover tomorrow to survey the damage.
00:12AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is live in Marshall. Marshall is about 20 miles northwest of Asheville
00:17and Bill, some of these homes there are a total loss and in some cases uninsured.
00:25Yeah, Jeff Bree, this is just a heartbreaking situation for so many people here
00:29in Marshall, North Carolina. On the other side of town, the floodwaters were so powerful that
00:34there are a number of buildings that are just completely gone. It's down to the concrete slab,
00:39all that's left. On this side of town, some of the apartments, some of the businesses here,
00:45they're dealing with 5, 10, even 15 feet of water that got inside the first floor, in some cases
00:51into the second floor. Now, as you can see, things have wrapped up for the evening. There's no power
00:56here, so it's going to get dark here very quickly. Most of the people that were cleaning up have
01:00cleared out, so we were able to get into town to get a closer look of everything that's just caked
01:05in mud. And you could see from our video from earlier today, there was a steady stream of
01:09families coming in from neighboring communities in the mountains here of Western North Carolina
01:14offering help. They parked near a roadblock and they walked into this town with their shovels,
01:20wheelbarrows, and other supplies to help clean up this muddy mess and offer any help to families.
01:26Josh Adams has lived here in Marshall for years. He and others knew there was a storm coming after
01:32days of torrential rain, and then Helene arrived. But Josh says no one he knows was expecting this
01:38level of devastation. It's hard to prepare for something that nobody's ever seen or heard of.
01:45It doesn't matter what kind of warnings you get. If nobody's experienced or knows anybody who has,
01:49it's hard to mentally prepare, it's hard to accept that it might happen,
01:53and it's hard to understand just how bad it could get when nobody has ever experienced it before.
01:59Nobody that's alive has ever seen it as bad as it is.
02:05Within the past hour, we just got a look inside one of the houses still standing. Look at this.
02:10The water line is at the top of their windows. The power from the water ripped apart the kitchen,
02:17tossing around the refrigerator. The man who calls this place home gave us permission to
02:21step onto his front porch to get a look inside. And guys, that's not a riverfront home. That's on
02:27the other side of this street, several feet up in elevation. That's how much water these families are
02:33dealing with. And again, we're on the side of Marshall where there's still buildings standing.
02:37They weren't hit as hard on this side of town. We can't access the other side of town where some of
02:42the buildings are just down to concrete slabs. This is just a very, very difficult situation
02:46for so many families. They tell us they still need a lot of help in Marshall.
02:51All right, Bill, thanks for that reporting. Very difficult scenes. Our hearts go out to those
02:56who are dealing with tremendous loss here, whether it's physical loss or far worse than that,
03:01the loss of human life there as some are still missing. And we have 140 as the latest count of
03:07those who have lost their lives that we're aware of at this point.