Army National Guard assisting a resident with potable water in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on September 29, 2024 in Old Fort, North Carolina.
©Scientific American: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images
Scientific American, 22 October 2024
As Hurricane Floodwaters Recede, a Public Health Threat Rises
A potable water shortage and a toxic stew of sewage and other pollutants that Hurricane Helene’s flooding left behind have prompted a race to avert a public health crisis in North Carolina.
Each day at 10 in the morning, more than a dozen people gather outside Gold’s Gym just south of downtown Asheville, North Carolina. After organizing themselves into groups — Spanish speakers in one, for example, and those with medical skills in another — they grab a couple of five-gallon buckets each and climb into trucks. Soon everyone rumbles off to spend the day performing an essential task: flushing toilets.
Twenty days after Hurricane Helene brought torrential rain and deadly floods to western North Carolina, over 100,000 people still lack potable water. The crisis stretches beyond the city out to nearby mountain communities of Swannanoa and Black Mountain. Federal and state officials have been sending water, but supplies are limited, and as service is restored, locals are being told to boil anything that didn’t come out of a bottle. Even as hundreds of thousands of people continue digging out from the devastation wrought by the storm, the risk of disease is mounting.