It’s been three weeks since Hurricane Helene made landfall over the Florida panhandle and cut a path of destruction across the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains, bringing more than 30 inches of rain and 100-plus mph wind gusts to western North Carolina.
For six of those days, Smithfield’s Red Point Taphouse co-owner Tim Ryan and his daughter, Kelly, have been doing whatever they can to help locals pick up the pieces of their pre-Helene lives, sometimes literally by clearing debris from roads and driveways.
In the early-morning hours of Oct. 7, Ryan loaded a chainsaw into his pickup truck and set out 400 miles west across the North Carolina state line to Burnsville, a Yancey County town with a population of 1,600 at the base of Mount Mitchell, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River. According to the North Carolina State Climate Office, Mount Mitchell and its surrounding localities saw up to 31 inches of rain and 106 mph winds Sept. 25-27. According to the state health department, there were 95 verified storm-related fatalities across North Carolina as of Oct. 17…