Raleigh North Carolina News

An Avery County man is recovering in the hospital Saturday night as he says flooding from Hurricane Helene killed his wife. Jamie and Melissa Gunn had four children, three of which came from Melissa’s previous marriage, and were just weeks away from celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary. He said he would also get her something small around Halloween because that was the day he proposed to her. “She had a dark sense of humor, but…

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — The last time Drew McLean’s parents saw him, he was marveling at the power of Tropical Storm Helene as it washed over their home in the mountains of North Carolina. He and his mother found that a large tree had split in the front yard and another had been pushed by surging water into McLean’s car, tipping it on its side. Amid the chaos, McLean, 45, offered his mother a comforting…

You can’t see the floor at Micheal Danford’s home in Old Fort. It’s covered in mud – a lingering sign of the floodwaters that filled her home last week. Many of their belongings are waterlogged. “This mud is just on everything,” she said while guiding a WRAL News crew through her home. Danford said they spent hours shoveling mud from inside their home to the outside. Included in those piles were damaged belongings. However, they…

Family members rescued a Burnsville couple and their dog after Helene’s floods trapped them for four days. Olivia Cooner, her boyfriend Eli Shipman and their Corgi terrier dog are now staying with family on Topsail Island. “We are in indefinite displacement and figuring it out day by day,” Cooner said. Cooner said they got no notices to evacuate last week before the storm. They bought enough food, water and dog food to get them through…

First responders located the body of Julie Le Roux Friday after she went missing in a mudslide caused by Helene in Marion, North Carolina. According to family members of Le Roux, she was recovered Friday after days of searching in and around Marion. Family members of John Norwood, Le Roux’s fiancée, say he doesn’t consider himself lucky or a “miracle survivor.” Rescuers used a pulley system to bring him to safety over dangerous floodwaters. Norwood…

Many musical artists are planning benefit concerts to help raise funds for Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina. On Friday night, bluegrass group Gangstagrass will perform a benefit show at the Aria Center, 2609 N. Duke St. in Durham. The performance will raise money for the North Carolina Red Cross’s relief efforts in Western North Carolina. Tickets are $25 general admission and $15 for students. On Oct. 13, the Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble and the…

Singer Sturgill Simpson, the Nashville disrupter who won a Grammy Award for his 2016 album, “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” on his property in Sewanee, Tenn., Sept. 12, 2019. Simpson, whose new album, “Sound & Fury” debuts Sept. 27, 2019, refuses to be what others want him to be. (Kristine Potter/The New York Times). Sturgill Simpson has announced a special benefit concert supporting disaster relief efforts in the state on Oct. 21 at Booth Amphitheatre. All…

Madison County is one of the many counties in western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene over the weekend. As residents in Marshall combat potentially dangerous dust lingering in the air and feet of mud covering everything on the ground, those in Hot Springs face the challenge of getting people in to move supplies. Several supplies moved in Thursday night, but now many in the town are racing against the clock to get manpower into…

There’s extensive visible damage, but the sense of loss for what remains unseen is equally deep and painful, as McDowell County has been devastated. “It’s unfathomable at this point,” Steve Little, Marion mayor said. “So much has just washed away.” He says it took just a couple of seconds. Steve Little has been the longtime mayor of Marion. “Major, major mudslides,” Little continued, referencing the destruction, including the yellow house in Old Fort. “It collapsed…

The town of Marshall is covered in feet of mud, and people are wearing masks because of dust in the area. Volunteers and people digging out their homes and businesses are also wearing coveralls, before the mud covers them too. “We’ve been shoveling pretty much solid since Sunday,” said Becca Phillips. Phillips said she and her family are digging out their second home. “All the furniture is destroyed. It’s all piled outside,” Phillips said. “We’ll…

Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday afternoon there are positives for western North Carolina in its recovery efforts after the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene. Cooper said he and state leaders are working with local utility companies and hospitals. “There is hope that 90% of the power could be back as early as [Friday], but I’m going to let them [the utility companies] say that,” Cooper said. “That’s something I heard a little earlier.” PowerOutage.us shows…

When the warnings first arrived, days before the remnants of Hurricane Helene, Kimberly Moody took note of what was said — and what wasn’t. The storm was going to be bad, that much was clear. But no one said she needed to start packing. In the wake of the devastation that leveled swaths of her town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, and that killed a friend when he was swept into the Swannanoa River, Moody…

By Aaron Thomas, WRAL reporter Raleigh, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes played a Wednesday night preseason game at a sold-out crowd at the Lenovo Center to help aid victims of Hurricane Helene. The team announced two days earlier that tickets for Wednesday’s game would be the Hurricane Relief Game. According to Doug Warf, president of Hurricane Holdings, LLC., the team raised more than $280,000 from ticket sales for the game and sold out the more…

Wake County saw minimal effects from Hurricane Helene last week, but that doesn’t mean schools in the state’s largest district aren’t interested in helping those affected by the storm in western North Carolina. One high school student in Raleigh took it upon herself to organize a donation drive that now involves about half of the high schools in Wake County. Libby O’Leary, a junior two-sport athlete at Athens Drive High School and a member of…

The before and after from Lake Lure shows how landmarks ended up destroyed during Hurricane Helene. Not one but two beloved bridges were swept away by the storm. On the road from Chimney Rock to Lake Lure, years of work and care transformed an abandoned bridge into a garden oasis. The Flowering Bridge was a destination for photographers and visitors to stop and soak in the amazing color. Helene turned that color to catastrophe. “Half of…