It has been well over a week since Hurricane Helene unleashed her fury on North Carolina and Tennessee. Even as we await today’s landfall of Hurricane Milton, once called the second strongest hurricane ever recorded, people are still trying to put their lives together in the wake of Helene. Forget putting life back together; they are still trying to find any shred of what their lives were. They are trying to find any kind of footing on which to move forward.
North Carolina Farm Service Agency Director Bob Etheridge says the damage in the mountains is staggering. It’s not like when you see flooding in the flat parts of the country.
His office has been inundated by calls from farmers who don’t know where to turn, or how to even begin to start their lives anew. A lot of these producers are livestock farmers who have lost livestock in numbers too large to get an accurate count.
This has been a problem for dairy producers, especially. Cows need to be milked two times a day, and we are seeing whole dairies that have been washed away.
What added insult to injury was the fact that 99-100% of the state of North Carolina was in a drought. Now they are facing what Director Etheridge is calling apocalyptic flooding.
Former Iowa Governor and current United States Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack surveyed the damage and says this is destruction the likes he has never seen.
Director Etheridge assured North Carolinians that his office is doing everything it can to help the state’s ag producers.
