TAZEWELL, Va. – Tazewell County leaders and residents are continuing to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Tazewell County Administrator, Eric Young, says while the flooding has not been as widespread as expected, the winds have created an unprecedented challenge for the county, reaching speeds of sixty to seventy miles per hour. This resulted in disasters all over the area.
“The damage has been very difficult to assess because it’s everywhere. Typically, when we have an event like a flood or a forest fire, we know where that is, and we concentrate our people, but we have three hundred roads in our county and there are trees down on every one of them at some point,” says Young.
A big concern now is the power, with the county “struggling” to get the power back on for many residents, with that loss of electricity also resulting in a loss of running water for some residents who rely on pumps. Among those affected by the outage, the Tazewell County Animal Shelter were forced to close, according to this post on Facebook.
Despite continued restoration efforts, Young says the destruction across the east coast means progress is slower than he’d like.
“This has been a much more widespread disaster county-wide than we’ve had, and the bigger disaster that elsewhere in the state and North Carolina and Tennessee is spreading a lot of the state and federal resources we rely on really thin, so it’s taking a little bit longer to recover from than we hoped, but we’re working hard at it and we’ll all get through eventually,” says Young.
However, Young says progress is being made, with communications restored on Saturday and the number of people without power changing hourly.
Young gives credit to the first responders who are going above and beyond to help their communities, calling them “heroes.”
He also says AEP has been providing regular updates, which estimate that most residents should have their power restored Tuesday night. He encourages those who are displaced by the storm to contact the 911 center to get emergency shelter at the Tazewell County Fairgrounds.
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