Hurricane Helene has torn through cities across the Southeast, killing at least 120 people in six states since it made landfall on Thursday. The death toll is still expected to rise. Some of the worst damage has happened inland in North Carolina, and almost a third of those killed were in Buncombe County, which surrounds Asheville, N.C.
The storm, fueled by very warm ocean temperatures, grew from a Category 1 to a Category 4 hurricane in less than a day, making it harder for communities to prepare.
We knew that many of the places that were pummeled by Helene were very vulnerable to extreme weather events. Helene was the third hurricane to hit Florida’s Big Bend region in 13 months.
But the tragedy in Asheville, the artsy city that has grown rapidly in recent years, was surprising for many.
Asheville has long been described by some news outlets as a “climate haven,” or a place that’s safer from climate change. It doesn’t experience the wildfires that are common in parts of California or the storm surges that frequently upend life in coastal cities.
“I had always felt like we were safe from climate change in this region; we talked about that a lot in town,” Erica Scott, a wedding photographer, told The Times’s Eduardo Medina and Richard Fausset.
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