The situation in North Carolina is extremely dire. I’ve seen the TikTok videos and tweets on X painting an apocalyptic picture. But it can sometimes be difficult to discern the real story vs Internet sensationalism. Since COVID, I’ve tried to not drawn any conclusions other than what I perceive with my own senses or hear directly from trusted colleagues & friends.
At any rate, I expected a few thousand to be dead in western NC, but in speaking with a friend last night, I realized that I had really low-balled the number.
Backstory: my friend is also a nurse anesthetist. She resides in Florida but is doing a “travel assignment” at a hospital in North Carolina (she started there before Helene hit). The following is what she has told me:
“Other CRNAs have been involved in the plane program, flying in shipments from private organizations to drop zones in the mountains. They fly to different bases, some in NC, some in Tennessee, even to a jail!… to pick up supplies then are flying them directly to the remote areas. Plane only can hold 1800lb of supplies. So they make 5 trips in 9 hours…each day. They drop off epi, insulin, meds, food, water, etc. they said the people flock to the plane like a third world country. Thousands are still stuck there with no way out, impoverished people with medical needs, no heat (it’s getting cold at night), no electricity, etc. no FEMA there. One PACU nurse’s husband went on the ground there to help. She said he came back in a state like she’s never seen. Dead babies in trees, hanging in branches, bodies everywhere, but the people in trees, no one can get to. There’s no ladder tall enough. He is traumatized. My coworkers whose husbands work for fire rescue in NC said the body count for the flooding is 13,000 or more. Not 250.”
My concern now is disease outbreak in the coming weeks without accessibility to clean water. Please pray for these suffering souls.