Natasha Vidal was never told to evacuate before Hurricane Helene roared into Yancey County, North Carolina, last September.

She and many others should have been, she says. Fewer people might have suffered and died.

“I made a video to my kids in case they found me dead. That’s how bad it was,” she said nearly a year after Helene killed at least 108 people in North Carolina and left billions of dollars in damage in North Carolina.

After heavy rain, floodwaters and landslides washed out bridges and cut off every means of escape for Vidal, she was stuck alone with only her dog for four days in her Burnsville cabin until a National Guard helicopter rescued them.

“We all would have left,” Vidal said. “But nobody told us to.”

Yancey was one of at least five Western North Carolina counties that never issued evacuation orders ahead of remnants of Hurricane Helene reaching North Carolina, even though federal forecasters warned that historic, life-threatening and catastrophic flooding, landslides and winds were ahead.

Effective warnings are especially critical since official flood zone maps are outdated, leaving residents unaware of the risks they face dependent on timely alerts.

Now, officials and residents are asking: if another storm strikes, will North Carolina do better?

Local officials, who are making changes, say yes. Residents say they want certainty that any messaging will be clear, reach everyone who needs it, and be delivered in ways they can trust.

Sirens and audible alerts

Evidence of improvements is visible in some Western North Carolina communities one year after the storm. Some counties are adding sirens that don’t depend on fragile cell networks to emit warnings, for one.

Haywood County is installing 18 new flood sirens with the help of a $750,000 state emergency management grant, said Cody Grasty, the county’s resiliency and recovery manager. The sirens are concentrated in communities like Crusoe and Lake Logan, which have previously been devastated by flash flooding and where cell service has failed during storms like Helene and Tropical Storm Fred.

The sirens will wail, much like tornado or civil defense sirens, with a range of up to a mile and a half depending on terrain and leaf-cover, Grasty said. They’d be reserved for flood and flash flood alerts to signal residents to move to higher ground and seek more information.

Rain and river gauges are getting installed too. Beginning next year, the county will test whether they can automatically trigger sirens when water levels spike. Full integration of the system, including activation from the 911 center, is expected by early 2026.

Buncombe County is also working with FEMA and state emergency management staff to install a new siren system designed to operate through power and cell outages, said Ryan Cole, emergency services director.

Henderson County is applying to FEMA for funding to build a new siren system, Public Safety Director Jimmy Brissie said. Rather than atop fire station roofs, sirens would be placed along areas prone to flash flooding that have both tone and voice capacity, Brissie said, allowing officials to broadcast a wailing alarm or spoken instructions.

But sirens only work when people understand what they mean, stressed Grasty from Haywood County.

Staff in his county are planning town hall meetings, outreach to campgrounds and Airbnb hosts to spread the word. And it has new information campaigns in the works for its website, which has become a trusted resource during storms, he said.

“The siren just signals that something’s wrong,” Grasty said. “The campaign is what will teach people what to do next.”

Radios, redundancy and backup tech

After Helene’s chaos knocked out cell towers, sliced underground fiber lines and broke internet access, many counties were unable to reach residents or even each other.

In Henderson, that taught county officials the value of “old-school methods” to reach people. After the storm, county officials printed hundreds of flyers and brought them to fire stations, churches, and other community hubs so residents could see updates about resources and assistance.

The county relied heavily on local radio. Henderson’s PIO team broadcast updates every day during the storm on local stations like WLOS, WYFF, WHNS and WSPA, one of the few channels still working when cell towers failed

Everyone was reminded of the importance of residents keeping battery-powered weather radios and antennas at home.

“So many folks have become reliant on that cell phone,” Brissie said. “Having redundant ways to receive information is just super critical.”

To back up responders, Henderson has also multiplied its supply of satellite phones from six to 18 and portable internet hotspots that don’t rely on cell towers or fiber lines from 18 to 60 since Helene, Brissie said.

In Burke County, officials issued voluntary evacuation notices in flood and landslide zones and sent firefighters door-to-door to get people moving, a spokesperson wrote in an email to the Observer. Most residents evacuated, but the storm still showed just how fragile the county’s communication network could be.

When Helene hit, North Carolina’s VIPER radio system — the statewide network first responders use to talk to each other — was quickly overloaded, forcing agencies to scramble onto backup VHF channels.

Since then, Burke County has added layers of redundancy by purchasing Starlink internet terminals that connect to satellites rather than towers, HAM radios and more satellite phones so emergency responders can keep talking when traditional systems fail.

It is also planning for more pre-staging of rescue boats, EMS crews, and shelter supplies in remote areas.

A new public information team is now tasked with blasting alerts in multiple ways, including with daily partnerships with local AM and FM radio stations, the spokesperson said.

In Yancey County, where Vidal was trapped with her dog after Helene hit, the disaster underscored the importance of having enough people to help manage emergencies.

At the time, it had just one full-time and one part-time employee. Since then, the county has added another full-time staffer and is building a joint facility to house the sheriff’s office, emergency management, and 911 call responders under one roof.

Community readiness

Those in emergency management in Western North Carolina stressed that even the loudest, clearest alert won’t matter if people don’t listen. Some residents who remained at home during Helene acknowledge that they dismissed storm warnings as routine.

Nellie Cifaldi, a 28-year-old Burnsville resident, said her phone buzzed constantly with weather alerts from the local sheriff’s app in the days before Helene. The messages felt no different than thunderstorm alerts she saw all the time, she said.

“It almost wasn’t out of the ordinary,” Cifaldi said.

No evacuation order ever came, she said, and by the time it was clear how bad the storm would be, she was trapped. The only bridge out of her neighborhood was underwater.

“The first things to flood are the ways out,” she said.

Even after Helene, though, she’d probably not evacuate next time, and believes it should be up to each individual to decide whether they want to leave, she said. Such independence runs deep in Yancey County, said Hilliard, Yancey County’s sheriff.

“People are independent and don’t want to rely on other people’s assistance,” he said.

But Helene changed so many things, including for Hilliard.

“I’ve already told my family, if this is ever forecast again, they’re leaving,” he said. “I can’t go through the not knowing.”

Others say the wording of official warnings needs improving.

Suzette Stoutenberg, 62, splits time between Yancey County and Florida. She recalled a National Weather Service notice about “deadly landslides on the Blue Ridge escarpment.”

“I have a Ph.D., and I didn’t even know what that meant,” she said. “If you can’t explain it at a fifth-grade level, people can’t act on it.”

Melissa Adams, an Appalachian State professor who is studying communication during Helene, said she’s found that in many Western North Carolina places, it wasn’t official alerts that spurred people to leave their homes. It was church leaders opening sanctuaries and neighbors knocking on doors, including in her own Watauga County community near Grandfather Mountain.

Not only the government can help during such disasters. County officials are also urging residents to get prepared for the next disaster.

Buncombe county has adopted a “Ready, Set, Go” wildfire-style model to get people thinking ahead: be ready to pack, get set when alerts come, and go quickly if told to leave, Cole said. Henderson County is leaning harder on public education that encourages residents to keep a 72-hour kit with food, water, medications, and backup communications like radios.

Some residents say they have a new commitment to being ready to evacuate. Brittany Franklin remembers waiting for an evacuation order in her Yancey County mobile home, but one never came. In the meantime, floodwaters crept closer and closer to her place.

“We lost cell service," she said. “We didn’t know if our next-door neighbor was alive.”

Next time Franklin won’t wait for someone else to tell her what to do. “I’ll just go.”

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