Seventy-nine billion dollars. That’s the official estimate of the destruction left behind by Hurricane Helene as the first anniversary of the storm is marked this weekend in communities across the southeast.

North Carolina bore the brunt of the storm. The death toll of 108 was the highest of any state, and the damage of $59 billion was three-quarters of the storm’s total. Official totals, though, can’t begin to describe all the impacts of the storm, which are still being felt in the many communities where the hurricane raged.

My family is from Western North Carolina, and there the hurricane’s power was intensified by the very Appalachian Mountains that natives believed had protected them from such disasters in the past. This time, the opposite was true. Mountain ridges and ravines fu

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