avlwatchdog

To Dr. Ruchi Moore and her colleagues at Asheville’s Laurel OB/GYN, Hurricane Helene’s onslaught felt like a rerun of the COVID-19 pandemic “plus just an insane snowstorm.” The storm shuttered the practice, leaving patients in crisis, and destroyed one employee’s home. But Moore and her staff plan to reopen today, even though they lack water. […]

Hundreds of thousands of western North Carolina residents have limited or no cell phone signal in the wake of Hurricane Helene. As the area deals with the aftermath, Asheville Watchdog will provide a daily status report on the cell phone service outages in Buncombe, Rutherford, Madison, Yancey, Transylvania, McDowell, Haywood, and Henderson counties. The data […]

Hurricane Helene brought record rainfall and devastation to western North Carolina. In Buncombe County alone, the death toll currently stands at 61 and scores are unaccounted for. Most of Asheville and Buncombe lack running water, and City Manager Debra Campbell said at Wednesday afternoon’s news briefing that water that has been shipped here will last only […]

Since Friday, Buncombe County has provided twice-daily updates on Hurricane Helene’s devastation. At the briefings, county officials clearly have taken the lead in disseminating information.  City of Asheville representatives have appeared sporadically. On Saturday and Sunday, the first two days after the storm passed, no representative from the city of Asheville was present in three […]