Page 64 of 107 Days

In the hills and valleys of western North Carolina, the force of the floodwaters buckled roads, picked up tractor trailers, uprooted trees, and washed away homes. Eighty-six people in the state had been killed.

The damage was even worse than what I’d witnessed in Georgia.

Usually, hurricane effects are most severe on the coast, but unexpectedly, inland mountain communities had been hardest hit.

Before the storm, the area had experienced several days of heavy rain, saturating the soil and filling rivers.

The Blue Ridge Mountains acted as a funnel, channeling the hurricane’s massive rainfall through the valleys.

The North Carolina Air National Guard had been flying supplies into remote mountain communities and doing low-altitude sweeps of the hills and hollows, looking for people in need of rescue since roads and bridges had been washed away and communications were down.

As I shook hands and looked into tired young faces, I realized that some of them had also suffered loss in the storm, but were still showing up, helping others.

I told them, “You are doing God’s work on the ground.”