A Letter From Banner Elk
by Chris Davis
An intro from slayfk: Banner Elk is a small municipality in Avery County, North Carolina. It’s right near Boone, Valle Crucius, and Blowing Rock—that whole area. It’s a cute town that is home to a large amount of elderly retirees and many local shops. Hurricane Helene completely cut Banner Elk off from the rest of the world. Residents have no internet, no power, no way to get out. It is only accessible by air. The bridge that connects it to the rest of the world looks like this now:
Banner Elk is a beautiful town full of kind people and they need help. Chris Davis, a resident of Elk River in Banner Elk, wrote a plea to the outside world and managed to get it through. I will paste it below, as it’s incredibly important to read.
“Inside the Elk River community of Banner Elk, we are stranded. No power, no water. All day Saturday we cut trails through the trees fallen over the roads, in hope small vehicles can move around and we can check on each other.
If we reach the bottom of the mountain, we understand that the bridge over the Elk River is out. We are stranded. But, we do not know how stranded everyone else is.
We need intelligence; status of the outside world. Infrastructure. For instance, it would help to know when roads will be repaired so that help can come.
There are 20 horses at the barn. They probably have water for three days. Horses will drink 10 gallons of water a day. Do the math.
There are elderly people on the mountain. One lady has so many trees to her house we cannot see our way to cut through to check on her.
It seems as if a flood washed out the bottom and a tornado took out everything else.
Some homes have generators. That does not mean people whose generators are running are actually here. I hear them running. It is only a matter of time before fuel runs out.
I am able to connect with you because one neighbor, if he stands in the right place on his deck, has use of a telephone that allowed me to reach my wife.
She connected with my out of town neighbor who has a generator who shared her Wi-Fi password that I can at least come to their house charge batteries and send you this note.
We hear rumors of helicopters coming in to rescue people.
It is probably worse somewhere else. We will continue to try to clear the roads in our community to support one another and be ready for an evacuation.
Obviously, the Mountain communities will need all the help they can get. Immediately and later.
In the meantime, basic facts matter a lot. We just need to know what the situation is so that we can make rational decisions.
I’m only getting bits and pieces of information from other people such as Newland is flooded and the National Guard is there; mud slides block the Eagles nest community from getting out; the road to Boone is washed out…”
An outro from slayfk: This is not a unique story. Towns all across Appalachia and the southeast states are cut off from the world or utterly decimated. Asheville is the most notable, but there’s also Chimney Rock NC, Marshall NC, Junaluska NC, Swannanoa NC, Biltmore Village NC, and more. Entire towns are ruined. People are trapped. People are trapped with no way to escape and they don’t know what’s going to happen to them. People are starving, animals are starving, 600 people are missing and 100 people are dead.
Appalachia is suffering. No one in power cares.
Talk about us. Donate to rescuers and aid funds. Don’t let the government sweep us under the rug again. We are here and we need help.
