Hurricane Helene forces North Carolina residents to sleep in tents where homes once stood

SWANNANOA, N.C.– Nearly a month after Hurricane Helene devastated areas of the Southeast and killed more than 250 people, North Carolina residents are sleeping in tents where their homes once stood, even as temperatures drop to the 30s at night.Kris Weil is one of several people in hard-hit Swannanoa sleeping in a tent with his dog outside his home, which was destroyed by intense flooding and winds on Sept.

27.Weil’s story is nothing short of a miracle.Less than 24 hours before the storm struck the Appalachian Mountains, Weil’s 8-month-pregnant girlfriend was transported to the hospital because she was experiencing chest pain.

Weil stayed home to prepare for the baby, at which point he started getting flood warnings on his phone, not knowing he’d soon be left with nothing.Weil watched as water rapidly flooded his neighborhood and then made its way inside his home.“The house completely got washed off its foundation, and we got sucked out the back window — with me and my friend and three dogs — and managed to survive long enough for a swift water rescue boat to come get us, just by chance, they had just showed up in town from Chicago, Illinois,” Weil told Fox News Digital.“They came and got us out of the tree with a rescue boat.

And we’ve been staying in tents.”The water that flooded Weil’s home forced him out a back window that had broken open.He was able to latch onto a vine attached to a tree in his backyard with one hand and hold onto one of his dogs with the other hand as water rushed through the area.It wasn’t until nearly six hours later that a rescue boat from Cook County, Illinois, arrived and transported Weil and his friend to safety.“She would have been in that tree with me,” Weil said of his girlfriend had she not gone to the hospital before the storm hit.For days, there was no cellphone service or Wi-Fi for Weil to contact his girlfriend, but when he eventually found a way to contact her, he learned she had been tra...