YANCEY COUNTY, N.C. (BP) — The devastation from flooding during Hurricane Helene in North Carolina will have a long-lasting effect on farms and homes, said a former Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief (KYDR) volunteer who is now a county extension agent in the Tar Heel state.

David Davis, who spent about 10 years in Kentucky before taking the extension agent job in his hometown of Yancey County in June 2020, said many in the county will be without power for another 10 to 14 months because of damage to roads, including some that are completely washed out.

“They are resilient in the county,” he said. “They are running generators for their power and counting on each other.”

North Carolina Baptist Disaster Relief, where Davis volunteers, has asked KYDR for help with generators. It has asked for 100 new or gently used generators and Kentucky has responded with more than half that total, according to the latest report from KYDR Director Ron Crow.

Davis said he has not been able to volunteer with North Carolina Disaster Relief because of his own job as a county extension agent trying to mitigate some of the damage that flooding from Hurricane Helene has done to the county.

“Right now, they are focused on personal homes, where are they going to live, some equipment and getting livestock cornered in and fenced in,” he said. “Focusing on basic needs.”

He said there is a way to restore the fields by bringing in fill dirt or topsoil from somewhere else and backfill with what they have left, but it will take a lot of heavy equipment and “that’s an expensive process.”

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a press conference this week that the bill to recover would be $53 billion. “I personally think that’s an underestimate,” Davis said.

Cooper told reporters the state’s previous record for storm damage was $17 billion from Hurricane Florence, which struck eastern North Carolina in 2018.

Davis has already distributed 76 generators and 50 propane heaters this week alone. It has been reported that 2,000 residential structures were destroyed in the storm and more than 700 homes damaged. “That doesn’t include the barns and businesses,” he said.

The flooding happened quickly, he said, after 32 ½ inches of rain fell on Mt. Mitchell. Fifteen inches came between 6:00 and 8:45 in the morning. “It’s a different kind of flooding than they experienced here. This time it was more like a flash flood with force,” Davis said.

“Before the storm, 60 to 65 percent of farmland was located near the river and creek bottom. This storm did not just impact named bodies of water, but streams became rivers. Some of these places are bigger than the largest river. Cane Branch, which normally you can stop up by putting two feet in. It was up over a four-unit apartment building.”

Davis said the storm took out the county water system with two intake plants completely wiped out. “We still don’t have sewer restored. We’ve got water pumping stations in from FEMA pretty quickly. There are shower units and feeding sites because people couldn’t cook in town.”

Shower units and feeding sites are where Southern Baptist Disaster Relief has been of great assistance. Kentucky Disaster Relief has been in Georgia, North Carolina and Florida dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and Milton. They have provided nearly 100,000 meals over the past month. Chainsaw teams continued to work in Georgia as well.

Davis said he was thankful for KYDR and others who have provided aid in North Carolina and his home county.

His first callout was during Katrina when he went with the Baptist Campus Ministry at Berea College. He also went to Gulfport, Miss., and Fremont, Texas, along with many in-state deployments.

Davis is proud to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief family.

“I’m a trained volunteer (for disaster relief) but haven’t had much of an opportunity to do disaster relief this time,” he said. “I know how important they can be during times like this. It’s a blessing to have them around.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark Maynard is managing editor of Kentucky Today (kentuckytoday.com), the news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. This article originally appeared in Kentucky Today.)