After days of unsuccessfully calling and texting relatives, Vignette Truett posted their names in a Facebook group chat in the hope that someone might tell her they were still alive.
“I have people I’m still waiting to hear from!” reads her post uploaded on Sunday. “I didn't stop for a second…super hard to sleep…rest…eat or anything really…without thinking the worst.”
Truett, hunched over her phone in a hotel in western North Carolina, is among hundreds of people who have turned to social media for help locating friends and loved ones in areas affected by the record-breaking was devastated by the rains of Hurricane Helene and the subsequent flooding.
Widespread communications failures have made information gathering difficult. So far, officials have received about 600 missing person reports – a number they hope will drop significantly as telecommunications are restored. At least 100 deaths have been confirmed across the southeast.
The devastation is widespread in Burnsville, North Carolina, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where Truett has lived with her husband and mother-in-law since 2019. Photos taken by local officials and those who managed to escape the rubble show cracked roads, collapsed bridges and buildings washed away by a rushing river.
Since the end of last week, residents across the city have had no electricity or cell service. And with many households receiving water from well pumps, many residents have no running water – a major concern for those waiting to hear from their loved ones.
“We're still trying all the rescue teams, shelters and people we can contact,” Truett, 24, told USA TODAY by phone. She and her husband managed to maintain cell service at their hotel in Boone, a town about 50 miles northeast of Burnsville. “We’ve been traveling non-stop for what feels like a month, but it’s only been a few days.”
Many use social media to get help finding loved ones
As rescue teams push deeper into the mountains, residents and family members have created online groups where users share resources and names of those contacted.
Through such a group, Dona Gardner, a teacher in Seneca, South Carolina, was able to confirm that some of her friends and relatives were still alive.
While browsing a Facebook group, Gardner came across a photo of her friend's daughter with the comment that she was doing well. Her friend's daughter had managed to hike five miles over broken roads, streams and debris to downtown Burnsville, where she met up with her family.
Later, Gardner saw a post in which a stranger asked residents of Weaverville, a small town north of Asheville and south of Burnsville, to come forward. One comment named her cousin and said she was safe.
“We've heard from my whole family now, but it wasn't until social media that we found out they were OK,” she said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
Residents in Florida and North Carolina are waiting for news from friends
In a coastal town near Tampa, Florida, hundreds of miles from their home in Burnsville, Suzanne Vale and her husband sat on their phones. They were waiting for calls from several of their neighbors, whom they had been trying to reach since Thursday.
Over a week ago, the couple was driving from their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to their home in Dunedin when Helene approached the Big Bend coast. While their home in Florida remained intact, their concerns immediately focused on Burnsville, where residents had no way to communicate with the outside world due to washed out bridges and roads.
After dozens of unanswered phone calls, emails and Facebook messages, Vale is now hoping someone in a Burnsville Facebook group will confirm her neighbor's safety.
“It’s unimaginable what happened,” Vale said.
Residents conduct health checks and publish results
Some people hiked to the Appalachian Mountains to find out for themselves whether their loved ones were okay. Upon returning, several uploaded lists of the names of neighbors and others they passed while checking on their own family — giving some people the first notification that their relatives were still alive.
“THANK YOU SO MUCH. My parents are on this list,” one person replied to a post.
Another wrote: “I'm from Florida and so happy to see my long time friend's name on this list. Her family and friends were worried sick.”
Among those searching for relatives is Gardner's 26-year-old son, Carlton Gardner. He set out Monday morning to look for his in-laws, who live in Pensacola, a neighborhood south of Burnsville.
“We haven’t heard anything, and we haven’t heard anything for several days,” Gardner said. “Luckily they live on a hill so we hope for the best. But we know there are mudslides in this area.”
Before Carlton Gardner left, he told his mother he would send her a list of names of people he met in the mountain suburbs so she could upload it to Facebook.
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