Fox Business Correspondent Gerri Willis joins Fox Across America With Jimmy Failla to tell us about her family’s harrowing experience down in North Carolina after their town was hit hard by Hurricane Helene.
“Our whole weekend, it was like 72 hours of anxiety and provocation. My mother and sister, Betty Jean and Frankie live in a tiny town, Spruce Pine, North Carolina, population 2300, very small town. It’s actually Appalachia. Okay. That’s where they are. It’s 45 minutes from Asheville. Tiny town inundated with 24 inches of rain over the weekend. Cell phone out, electricity out. There is no running water. I mean, nothing is happening. No relief in sight. We lose contact with them for more than 48 hours and not knowing how they are, if they’ve survived. We know that trees are falling everywhere. We know that that’s roadways and streets are cracking open and falling off the side of the mountain. All of this made worse because it is in the mountains, right? Very difficult to get in, out, in and out of little tiny Spruce Pine. It’s so small. Sits at the top of a mountain two ways and both blocked. So finally, I got good news just literally 90 minutes ago that my brother was able to get in and rescue them and start the journey back to his home in Virginia. But let me tell you, if this was some fancy place in Florida, do you think we’d be having these kinds of conversations about where’s the National Guard? Are they coming? We don’t know. Yeah. Can we get the cell phone coverage reestablished? No. This is because it’s Appalachia and it doesn’t count and nobody’s paying attention. We’ve gotten some coverage.”
Listen to the podcast to hear what else they discussed!
