ASHEVILLE, N.C. — One year after Hurricane Helene, it is hard to come up with a simple answer when asked, “How’s Asheville?”

There is recovery, with some infrastructure rebuilt, businesses open and many trails cleared.

But there are scars, with sunshine where shade used to be, wider creeks and patches of empty ground where last year someone’s home or livelihood stood.

While it is hard to not think about who or what is missing, there is a sense of community, forged by survival and a genuine desire to help one another.

On Sept. 27, 2024, the town of Black Mountain, just east of Asheville, was cut off completely by swollen waterways.

John Coffey, the fire chief of Black Mountain, told a Helene anniversary event this week that even though he'd felt he had prepared for the storm, “We weren’t expecting this.”

Most in western North Carolina would say the same.

In its drenching march north from Florida, the storm killed at least 250 people, the most in the U.S. since 2005’s Katrina. In North Carolina, 108 people died, with 43 of those in Asheville’s Buncombe County.

Wind and rain caused catastrophic damage — $78.7 billion worth across several states, with nearly $60 billion of the total in the Tar Heel State, according to the National Hurricane Center’s report on the Category 4 storm.

In Buncombe County alone, more than 300 homes were destroyed, more than 800 sustained major damage and nearly 9,000 required repairs to make them habitable, the

© The Hill