Longtime storm watchers are asking how a resort community located 600 miles from the Atlantic Ocean with elevations of 2,000 feet could experience destruction and casualties during Hurricane Helene.
I believe the lesson from the storm is that lack of adequate preparation against weather casualty will dangerously confront us in this era of climate change .
Poor community planning for weather events is an issue for both Florida coastal residents and interior communities.
I spent four years at Asheville School as a senior prefect and member of the Mountain Rescue Team. We were trained to go into the deep valleys and impassable terrain of the Blue Ridge Mountains to recover families on a weekend hike and air crash survivors in deep snow.
North Carolina government had no rescue capability in the 1970s — out-of-town teenagers from a boarding school were there to respond.
In Asheville, real estate developers were allowed to bury a local park and large lake in order to construct a new interstate freeway.