One year after flooding and high winds from Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of Southwest Virginia, leaders of the localities hit the hardest say they think the storms and flooding will continue and even worsen, and many are taking steps to ensure that they are better prepared for the next go-round.
All say they learned a number of lessons from the massive storm, which hit the region on Sept. 27. Many came to the same conclusions: They must come up with more backup for power outages, and they need to be less reliant on cellphones, which can fail during extended power outages.
In the months since the storm, local officials have purchased a number of generators so that power outages — some of which lasted more than a week — won’t be so disruptive. Russell County alone has bought more than 20 generators, according to County Administrator Lonzo Lester.
One county has bought rescue boats, and at least two counties are in the process of putting together their own swift-water rescue teams.
Local leaders also emphasized the need to clean up debris that comes with each flooding event and makes it that much easier for an area to flood the next time there’s heavy rainfall.
Emergency plans are being drafted or refined, and all the local officials said they are seeking state and federal money as well as grants to pay for the needed improvements.
On Sept. 26, Helene slammed into the Florida Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm and moved inland. In nearby northeast Tennessee and western North Carolina, more than 200 people died. In Virginia, two people died as a result of the storm, one in Tazewell County and the other in Craig County.
In Southwest Virginia, 4 to 10 inches of additional rain fell. The storm was preceded by days of steady rain across the region.
Most of the attention in the area was on the small Washington County town of Damascus and its surrounding communities of Taylors Valley and Green Cove, which were hit by flash flooding. Bridges were destroyed, nearly a mile of U.S. 58 was chewed up and half of the popular Virginia Creeper Trail was all but destroyed. About eight homes were destroyed, and 90 others needed significant repairs.
Although they sustained little flooding, other counties were hit by high winds that toppled so many trees that roads were blocked and the power couldn’t be restored for more than a week.
The area has experienced the inland effects of hurricanes in the past, resulting in rain and high winds. But most of the local officials said they never expected that the storm would take such a heavy toll nearly 600 miles inland.
Still, the area is no stranger to flooding. Since August 2021, there have been five major flooding events in the region; three of them — in 2021, 2022 and February of this year — annihilated parts of Buchanan County, particularly the Hurley area. The most recent flooding occurred July 18 in the Dante community of Russell County, which was hammered by about 7 inches of rain.
‘We need to be better prepared for the next natural disaster’
Chris Bell, Damascus’ first full-time town manager, had been on the job for just seven weeks when it was hit by the worst disaster since the big flood of April 1977, which dumped up to 15 inches on Southwest Virginia.
Although he said the town responded well, one of the biggest takeaways for Bell was that it had no emergency plan. He is now working to change that.
“Going forward, that is going to be so much more important for us to have plans, backup plans and contingencies because what we did was an incredible amount of improv,” he said. “So, we made it up on the fly and it worked out well, and in some cases we were blessed and got lucky. … Whether it’s another flood or tornado or wildfire, we need to be better prepared for the next natural disaster.”
Town officials are now actively working on establishing evacuation routes, fire preparedness and other plans, the town manager said.
Damascus also needs a debris plan that spells out the initial staging areas, how refuse will be collected and separated, and how it will be hauled off, he said.
A total of 12,086 cubic yards of debris was removed from Damascus, including construction and demolition, vegetative and waterway debris, according to the town. The town’s cost for debris removal was about $140,000, though much of the large-scale removal was handled by the state.
Already, the town has worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to acquire new battery-powered radios that will help town and emergency officials communicate if there’s another power outage and cellphone tower failure.
The devices also allow town leaders to talk on the first-responder channel, which means they can communicate with county officials, said Bell, who added that even when there is no power outage, cellphone service in the mountainous town can be spotty.
The town will also purchase a backup generator, and officials will work with the county to get a more advanced siren system that is solar- and battery-powered to notify town residents when there’s an emergency. The current siren can be heard across town, but it doesn’t let residents know what’s going on and it doesn’t work when there is no power, Bell explained.
The Helene flooding also damaged Damascus’ government buildings, displacing police, fire and town operations for nearly nine months. Repairs were made, and town offices had moved back in by July.
The town is in the process of purchasing additional flood mitigation protection for the public buildings, according to Bell. One device, called a flood sock, acts like an “instant sandbag” that expands and provides an absorbent barrier.
The total cost of damages to the town buildings, their repair and mitigation efforts was just shy of $1 million. It has applied to FEMA’s Public Assistance grant program for $853,000, and flood insurance is expected to pay for some of the total.
Washington County also saw damage to buildings and vehicles. At an EMS station in Green Cove, everything was destroyed except the shell of the building, according to Theresa Kingsley-Varble, the county’s emergency management coordinator. Repairs have since been made.
A military vehicle that had been repurposed as a fire truck was also destroyed.
The county spent more than $368,000 to buy a new generator for each of the county’s four community centers. Three have been installed, County Administrator Jason Berry said.
Additional generators will be purchased and placed at the county’s four high schools.
Kingsley-Varble is also in the process of setting up a swift-water rescue team and is working with the Bristol team, one of several that responded to the flooding in Damascus.
It will involve a lot of training and the purchase of equipment; the new team is expected to be ready to go by July 2026.
Like other county officials across Southwest Virginia, Kingsley-Varble said it is remarkable that no deaths occurred in Damascus, and she credits a lot of that to the swift-water teams.
She and Berry said that the governor’s office and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management had the foresight to start deploying swift-water teams and other aid the night before the storm hit, which meant the resources were in place when dozens of residents had to be rescued.
The key takeaway from the disaster for Berry was simply to “be flexible and do what makes sense for the community and your people, and use the resources that you have.”
He said he learned to partner first with local contacts and resources because they can arrive quickly. He said he also learned that there can be too many federal and state resources that respond, which can create issues and confusion for a local response effort.
“We know our community best. Having a lot of resources is great, but ensure deployment is appropriate and be willing to say ‘no’ if needed,” Berry said.
He said he also learned that local officials need to prepare for an influx of donations and figure out how to handle what may not be needed.
Applying for every grant they can find
In Smyth County, Helene resulted in “pretty intense” flooding in Marion and south of the town in the communities of Adwolfe, Sugar Grove and Konnarock, according to County Administrator Shawn Utt. About two dozen homes were destroyed, he said.
“Sugar Grove was probably the worst because you have to drive through the National Forest over the mountain to get there, and trees were down all over the place,” Utt said. “So they were an island for two or three days. We couldn’t get any help over there. Their volunteer fire department and a couple of churches gathered together and they pretty much took care of the community there.”
The South Fork of the Holston River was about 14 feet above flood stage, while the Middle Fork was 10 to 12 feet above flood stage, he said.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Utt said some of the organizations that would normally have helped during a disaster weren’t offering assistance. He believes they were focused on Damascus, and especially on east Tennessee and western North Carolina, where the devastation was even worse.
“They were wiped out, completely obliterated. So they needed the assistance, but there were a couple of days when I’m seeing all this stuff go to other localities and I was thinking, ‘We could really use some of those generators’ or ‘I could really use some of those mop buckets.’ It took a few more days for us to start getting some of that help,” Utt said.
The flooding showed county officials where improvements must be made. They are applying for every grant and funding source they can find to help pay for what’s needed, including backup generators at every sewer pump station.
“We’ve been mostly identifying the gaps and trying to find the money to pay for them rather than pay for it ourselves, because we don’t have a whole bunch of money in the bank just sitting around,” the county administrator said.
One of Utt’s key takeaways is the need to be flexible. While it’s important to have an emergency plan in place, it’s also critical to realize that everything may not work as expected, he said.
When Helene hit, the county had just updated its emergency plan, so the recent familiarity with it led to quicker action, Utt noted.
Electrical infrastructure ‘devastated’ by hurricane-force winds
The neighboring counties of Tazewell and Russell saw little flooding from Helene. Instead, wind was the primary problem. Gusts toppled large trees onto roadways, restricting county officials’ ability to bring help and delaying the restoration of power.
Tazewell County had sustained winds up to 90 mph, according to County Administrator Eric Young. The resulting damage was widespread across the county rather than confined to one or two areas, which is what normally occurs.
“We seldom experience hurricanes in the mountains, so many large trees had never been tested by 90 mph winds. We had blocked streets in all parts of the county,” he said, adding that a 150-year-old tree in front of the county courthouse fell.
Because the county’s land is so rocky, nearly all of its electric transmission lines are above ground, and the wind and downed trees “devastated” the electrical infrastructure, Young added. Large swaths of the county were without power for more than a week.
Compounding the problem, a number of generators for key telecommunications towers failed. That resulted in the loss of cell and radio communications, which limited the ability to deploy emergency personnel, according to the county administrator.
The county had mobile generators, but not enough because the damage was so widespread. It also had stationary generators with fuel tanks, but because the power outage lasted so long, they ran out of fuel. And because hundreds of trees blocked roads, the fuel trucks couldn’t get in to resupply.
This problem was most critical for the public water system, which relies on a series of pump stations powered by electricity to deliver water to homes. However, the state Department of Emergency Management provided generators, and eventually crews cleared the trees to allow for refueling.
County officials now say they’re most concerned about cleaning out all the debris from streams, although Young said he’s confident they can come up with the money needed.
By winter, the county will complete a study of its waterways that will show the key points that need to be cleaned out, Young said. He said he’s not yet sure what the cost will be, and he expects removal to take several years. The county will apply for grants and will start removing the worst of the debris as they get the money needed, he said.
But before crews can enter the streams to remove the debris, a number of permits are required from agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation and the state Department of Environmental Quality.
It can take up to three years to receive some state permits, while the timetable can be four to six years for the Army Corps, Young said. Tazewell County is working with the governor, FEMA and others to try to reduce that time, he said, but added that it’s likely that the area will flood several more times before the permits can be obtained.
Another complication is that the county’s streams are home to endangered species, particularly the Tennessee Heelsplitter mussel, a freshwater river mollusk. The presence of the mussels will require separate, specific habitat studies, and if mussels are found, they would have to be moved before the work could be done, he said.
County officials have applied to the state Department of Housing and Community Development for money to buy more generators for water pump stations and satellite phones for 911 and key emergency management personnel that would allow them to communicate through Starlink when cell towers are down.
They’ve bought four generators so far and plan to buy more.
Currently, they are replacing all first-responder radios with next-generation equipment that will allow communications between units in the field without going through 911, Young said. This is funded by a grant the county received in 2024 but had not had time to implement before the storm.
Like Tazewell County, Russell County had minimal flooding but high winds that knocked down so many trees that they blocked the roads and no one could get anywhere, said Lester.
Jess Powers, the county’s emergency management coordinator, said the winds were up to about 70 mph and kept changing direction, which rocked the trees back and forth until they fell. Although the county was able to clear the roadways within a few days, a widespread power outage lasted from eight days in and around Lebanon to 17 days in some areas, he said.
The county did not lose water service, he said.
Following the storm, the board of supervisors advised county officials to take action that would put the county in a better position to be proactive rather than reactive the next time it faces a disaster, said Lester.
The 22 generators that the county purchased after the storm were installed in every community center and fire department in the county, including in Dante, which had flash flooding in July. The two generators that were placed there made it easier for both residents and emergency responders, according to Lester.
The money for the generators came from a $500,000 grant from the Wellspring Foundation, he said. Rescue boats were also purchased and more are on the way, he said.
Since Helene, Russell County has had three flooding events, all this year, including the Feb. 15-16 flooding that struck Buchanan County’s Hurley area. In addition to the flash flooding in Dante, there was also flooding in the Belfast area in June, Powers said.
The county is also in the early stages of forming its own swift-water rescue team, Powers said.