Tracy Stevens had left her house in Chimney Rock Thursday night and gotten a room at the Lake Lure Inn, which had a generator and was staying open through the storm. The two towns, both popular tourist destinations, are walking distance to one another, joined by a bridge across the Broad River in the mountains of Rutherford County.

Water Mission, a Christian engineering nonprofit headquartered in North Charleston, is deploying its Disaster Assistance Response Team to Western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. The storm,