Even though meteorologists accurately predicted – days ahead of time – the dangerous and catastrophic flash-flooding Hurricane Helene’s landfall would bring to western North Carolina, the local officials responsible for evacuation alerts struggled to get people in flood-prone areas to safety.
There’s a litany of reasons for why mountain residents didn’t evacuate. For one, most counties – with the exception of spots in Clay, Buncombe, Rutherford, McDowell and Transylvania – did not issue mandatory evacuations.
Some people who received flood warnings simply did not take them seriously, since the area is rarely impacted by hurricanes. For others, warnings were delayed by downed cell towers and disrupted internet connection in a region known for low connectivity.
Helene killed 108 people statewide. At least 38 of the deaths are attributed to drowning.
In the wake of these casualties, officials across western North Carolina are revising their emergency response plans to match the new “worst case” scenario wrought by Helene.
To that end, more counties in western North Carolina are considering flood sirens – a much discussed piece of infrastructure after the Texas floods – as a way to ensure people receive warnings about dangerous flash floods. But not everyone is convinced that sirens are the best use of resources, given terrain challenges and the expense.
For Sarah Jackson, an assistant professor in the emergency and disaster management program at western Carolina University, the decision to install sirens is “not so cut and dry.”
“They can be really effective and really helpful, but we should never rely on them as the one form of warning technology,” she said. Installing siren networks is expensive for most local governments, and sirens are most effective for people outdoors, she explained.
Emergency alert sirens can generally be heard from up to half a mile away. At a few hundred feet away, the sound is as loud as a riding lawnmower. At a further distance, the alarm is as loud as a microwave. Most emergency flood warning sirens are programmed to activate automatically when river gauge sensors upstream indicate rising water. This generally provides between 10 to 20 minutes notice of a flood. Emergency officials may also manually sound sirens.
In places where cell service is sparse, sirens can be a good solution, Jackson said.
However, siren notice is more effective when people know exactly what to do when they hear the siren. For instance, if someone is used to hearing a siren for tornadoes, they might duck inside for cover rather than flee to higher ground, without proper community messaging, Jackson points out.
Ultimately, sirens are a tool in what should be a multi-layered local emergency communication strategy.
“We see in the research that people take warnings more seriously if they receive them from multiple places,” Jackson said. “So, it's never going to hurt to have them.”
In Haywood, sirens are part of a greater safety commitment
Haywood County has seen two major floods in the last five years.
In 2021, Tropical Storm Fred inundated the Pigeon River and wreaked havoc on the small towns of Canton and Cruso, killing six people and laying bare the dangers of living alongside a river with headwaters that start thousands of feet up a mountain. During Helene, three Haywood County residents died as a result of drowning, according to state records.
The flooding during Fred was a wake up call for Cody Grasty, Haywoord’s recovery and resilience officer.
“We saw what happened when the siren system wasn't in place,” Grasty said. “We lost six people. We made a commitment after Fred that at least if we can help it, with a siren system, we're not going to let that happen again.”
After applying for a state-funded grant to pay for a siren program, Haywood received in 2022 around $1 million from the state’s emergency management division. Rutherford County and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians also received post-Fred disaster mitigation funds.
Unfortunately, the Haywood sirens were not in place by the time Helene came through. But as experts predict climate change will bring more intense floods more frequently, Grasty said his community can no longer “be naive” to the threat.
“Whether it happens next year or 100 years from now, we can't set aside that this is not a threat. It absolutely is going to happen again, and we should be prepared for it,” he said.
This year, Haywood is finally installing 18 flood sirens in Cruso, Canton and Clyde. The county installed the first two sirens this month and the project is expected to wrap up early next year.
Once installation is complete, the county expects to have 20 miles of protection along rivers in the county – and officials are already working on expanding that coverage. The county has applied for a hazard mitigation grant that would allow it to extend its siren network to places like Waynesville and Maggie Valley.
While Grasty is optimistic about the role of flood sirens, he underscored that they represent “just one tool in the toolbox.” Early warnings, signage and education around how to react to sirens are also important, he said.
Gary Szyper is one resident who says he’d benefit from these sirens. He has lived with his wife Glenis in Cruso for three years and sees the siren project as a “comforting” resource in a place where cell service is unreliable, even on a blue-sky day.
A siren would “very much come in handy,” he said, especially for his son, who also lives in Cruso and struggles to get cell service in his log cabin. “Most people now don't have landlines. So any communication help whatsoever would just immensely help the community,” Szyper added.
Another resident, Amy Deaver, has lived in Haywood County for 20 years. During both Fred and Helene, Deaver lost cell service and had to rely on her car radio for emergency communications. She hopes that the siren would help people take future storms more seriously, but at the end of the day, she just wishes people would “use more common sense.”
During Helene, sirens were a mixed bag
Ahead of Helene, sirens had already been installed in Cherokee and in sections of Rutherford and Caldwell counties.
The sirens never sounded in Caldwell County, though, according to a report by WSOC. One resident in the area, Kim Pyatte, told WSOC that she didn’t receive any flood warnings. “Honestly, we could have all died up here without those warnings,” she said.
Another man, Jeremy Wallace, reported clinging to a tree for safety during Helene.
Caldwell is one of just eight western North Carolina counties that emerged from the storm with no fatalities in 2024.
Since the siren failure, Caldwell received $181,000 from FEMA to install new warning sirens and equipment in the Wilson Creek Area. As of publication, no official from Caldwell County has replied to requests for comment on why the sirens failed.
In Cherokee, where the Oconaluftee River is known to overflow, it was a different story. Josh Turner, the town’s Emergency Management Coordinator, said the sirens operated smoothly, especially in areas with unreliable cell service where residents chose not to evacuate. There were no deaths on the Cherokee nation’s Qualla Boundary during Helene.
Turner described the warning sirens as a “crucial piece of infrastructure.”
“Our principal chief had issued a voluntary evacuation order prior to Helene hitting. So luckily most of those low-lying areas and campgrounds had already been evacuated,” he said. “But the people that did stay do credit those sirens. They were able to get to higher ground.”
Sirens “give us a lot more peace of mind, knowing that we have a system in place that will be able to activate and automatically protect citizens and all the guests that like to visit the area,” he said.
In 2024, Cherokee received another $300,000 grant from the state’s post-Fred disaster mitigation fund, which the tribe will use to install seven more sirens.
Buncombe wants sirens, too. New funding may help.
Buncombe County is also pursuing a siren program for the first time, though it’s unclear whether its funding request to the state will be approved.
In July, the county submitted a letter of intent for a $12 million flood siren and stream gauge project to the North Carolina Department of Emergency Management.
The project would include 71 sirens and 33 stream gauges along 10 different waterways, including the French Broad River and Swannanoa River, both rivers that caused fatalities during Helene.
The sirens could also be used to warn people about landslides and other weather threats, Brad Hughes, Buncombe’s mitigation preparedness and recovery manager, said. In its application to the state for funding, the county acknowledged the sirens wouldn’t reach every square mile of Buncombe – but would “significantly expand early warning capabilities in areas most vulnerable to flooding and potential landslides, where timely alerts can help people take protective action.”
It’s unclear how quickly the state will act on Buncombe’s application.
“This is something that has been proven to save lives,” Hughes said.
“This is something that has been proven to save lives,” Hughes said. “And we are willing to ask for that investment from our partners, whether that's the state, the federal government, whatever to move this process forward, so that we can have the tools that we need to make sure that our community is resilient and can protect themselves as best as possible.”
In its letter of intent, Buncombe officials wrote that a collection of sirens would help protect residents at a time where flood risks have increased due to damaged streambanks and more intense and unpredictable rainfall.
During Helene, “although multiple alerts were issued by the National Weather Service and through IPAWS, many of those warnings went unheeded,” Buncombe officials wrote in the application. “The lack of locally tailored, location-specific alerts meant that too many residents either didn’t receive the message or didn’t believe it applied to them.”
While past funding opportunities for sirens have been limited, Justin Graney, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, said that the department is “happy to work with any local government on public warning and communications systems.”
There are also more funding opportunities incoming, he said. As part of the state’s Disaster Recovery Act, $20 million has been appropriated for a new Disaster Recovery Mitigation Fund.
And public notification sirens will be an eligible expenditure, Graney said.
“This grant opportunity will be rolled out to the counties in the very near future as it is being finalized,” he said.
Mitchell, Yancey skeptical of siren efficacy
When BPR asked emergency directors from Mitchell and Yancey counties – both places hard-hit during Helene – about siren systems, officials expressed reservations about effectiveness given their communities’ rugged landscape.
In places with sharp ridges and deep valleys, it’s more difficult for the siren sound to travel, explained Mitchell County Manager Allen Cook.
“If you picture the mountains and you got a big bend in a river with a mountain valley coming down, it blocks the sounds a lot, the way the river bends and works and weaves,” Cook said. “So you have a siren going off and that's great, but it's only going to be heard by 25 people.”
Much of Mitchell County is sparsely populated and Cook isn’t convinced it’s worth installing sirens.
Three Mitchell County residents died as a result of Helene, with one dying of drowning, according to state records.
In a county with a population of around 15,000, it makes more sense to “personally deliver messages” through door knocking, he said.
“I would love to get [sirens] in a few key areas. Say, for example, the town of Bakersville, the town of Spruce Pine, your high yield areas,” he added.
As of this month, Cook hasn’t submitted any applications for sirens, but said he’s “been asking about it and trying to see what kind of grant funding would be available.”
More immediately, Cook is worried about the threat of wildfires in Mitchell County. The Forest Service – one of the agencies in charge of controlling the burns – is understaffed, lacks experience and faces high employee turnover, BPR previously reported.
Mitchell County is in a particularly precarious spot after losing 48% of its trees during Helene, more than any other western North Carolina county.
“Wildfire can kill more of us than Helene because we have so much fuel load on our mountains,” he said. “The data out here on our fuel load is scary.”
Brandon Price, Yancey’s emergency management director, said he’s not opposed to a siren system, but he has other ideas he thinks might work better. Right now, he’s applying for a grant that would supply weather radios for all 19,000 residents in Yancey.
The radios have battery backup and essentially work as a direct hotline from the National Weather Service. If NOAA sends a warning, the radio will emit a distinct eight-second tone that’s loud enough to wake someone up, which is generally followed by a spoken warning.
“So whether the power's out or the power's on, that radio's going to activate,” he said.
In Yancey County, 11 people died as a result of Helene, including four due to drowning, according to state records.
Price, who worked on the coast before taking a leadership position in Yancey this January, is also working on building a new county-run swiftwater rescue team, as well as a CERT program, which trains everyday citizens in emergency response.
“We have a swift water boat that's been donated, a brand new one,” he said. “We’re in the process of getting a trailer and getting individuals through all the agencies cross-trained in swiftwater rescue so that we can deploy and start mitigating the rescue that's going on before we receive help or while help is on its way.”
