A complicated relief effort unfolds in North Carolina in the face of tough terrain, collapsed communications and a ticking clock

The beloved southern Appalachian terrain is now isolating remote enclaves as residents begin recovering from a storm that dumped as much as 30 inches of rain.

To Cory Vaillancourt, the only scene comparable to the one unfolding in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene is a war zone. Nearly two years ago, the Smoky Mountain News politics editor reported from a southern Ukrainian city shortly after its liberation from Russian control. “The conditions that I’m seeing here in western North Carolina are almost exactly the same, minus the gunfire and artillery shells,” he told CNN on Monday from the town hall in Waynesville, 30 miles west of the city of Asheville. “You have people who don’t have water, they don’t have medications, they don’t have personal hygiene products. “And,” he added, “they don’t have any way to get them.” Indeed, the idyll that made Asheville a regional tourist hub of artsy flair, bustling breweries and forested mountain majesty – nearly 300 miles from the Atlantic coast – today appears condemned after one of the deadliest hurricanes to strike the US mainland in the last 50 years. And now, it’s that beloved southern Appalachian terrain isolating the city and many even more remote neighboring enclaves as residents begin the long, hard work of recovering from a storm that dumped as much as 30 inches of rain in the region and left at least 140 dead across six states.