[Source: The North West Star]

The weary and worn residents of Julianne Johnson’s neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina, have been getting by without electricity since Hurricane Helene tore through the Southeast last week and upended their lives.

They’ve been cooking on propane stoves and using dry erase boards to keep up with local happenings while wondering when the lights will come back on.

Johnson, who has a five-year-old son and works for a land conservation group, received a text from Duke Energy promising her power would be restored by Friday night.

But as of midday, utility poles and wires were still draped at odd angles across the streets, pulled down by mangled trees.

“I have no idea what’s next,” said Johnson, whose family does have some power thanks to a generator. “Just the breadth of this over the whole region, it’s kind of amazing.”

She and her neighbours have been taking care of each other since Helene came ashore in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a path of destruction as it moved northward, killing more than 220 people in six states.

Nearly 700,000 homes and businesses were still without power on Friday, an improvement over the more than two million who had no electricity five days ago.

Duke Energy, the dominant electricity provider in North Carolina, said it hoped to restore power by Sunday night to many of its affected customers.

Though for roughly 100,000 living in places with catastrophic damage, it could be next week or longer.

“We’re talking about places where the homes no longer exist,” company spokesman Bill Norton said.

The power company said it would miss its Friday goal of getting power restored to almost all of its customers in South Carolina and that it was now shooting for Sunday.

Dominion Energy also said Friday that it would take longer than initially expected to restore power to the hardest hit counties in South Carolina.

The storm damaged water utilities so severely and over such a wide area that one federal official said it “could be considered unprecedented.” Repairs could take weeks.

Even water that’s unfit to drink is scarce. Some people have been hauling buckets from a creek to flush their toilet.

Officials also are advising people to collect non-drinkable water for household needs from a local swimming pool.

Without full repairs to the water systems, schools might not be able to resume classes, hospitals might not restore normal operations, and the city’s hotels and restaurants might not fully reopen.

In Florida, a dozen people died in the Tampa area, with the worst damage on the narrow string of barrier islands that stretch from St Petersburg to Clearwater.

“The water, it just came so fast,” said Dave Behringer, who rode out the storm in his home after telling his wife to flee. “Even if you wanted to leave, there was no getting out.”

Among the dead was Aiden Bowles, a retired restaurant owner who didn’t want to leave his Indian Rocks Beach home.

In North Carolina, exhausted rescue crews and volunteers continued to navigate past washed out roads, downed power lines and mudslides to reach the isolated and the missing.

“We know these are hard times, but please know we’re coming,” said Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller.

“We’re coming to get you. We’re coming to pick up our people.”