Hurricane Helene made landfall Sept. 27, and a week later, the situation is still dire. Karen Zatkulak, who worked as an anchor and reporter at KTVB from 2014-2016, lives and works in Asheville, N.C. now with her four kids.
Zatkulak is safe from the storm, but said her home still doesn’t have running water or any phone service. She said the storm was worse than anyone could have even predicted.
“It's heartbreaking to see and just to know that so many people lost homes, so many people lost lives, the death toll continues to rise every day,” Zatkulak said. “It’s just really tough to see your city go through something like this.”
Asheville is a mountainous region – which Zatkulak said makes it unable to withstand a storm as strong as this – and makes it hard for rescue crews to get into the area.
“There are still areas that rescue crews haven't been able to get to because there are so many trees down, just totally cutting off entire neighborhoods from any sort of aid,” Zatkulak said.
There is also still no phone service for the entire area of Asheville – so residents haven’t been able to check in with their loved ones to even make sure they are OK.
“For two or three days, we had no contact – there’s no way to get in touch with anyone,” Zatkulak said. “There's no way to check on your friends or your family. There's also no way to get any information.”
Working in news, Zatkulak said she was anchoring when the storm hit. She didn’t know if her family was OK at home – she said all her co-anchor and her could do was just hold hands.
“The strength and the power of the storm was unimaginable,” Zatkulak said.
And now – a week later – there’s still no way for Asheville residents to even watch the local news. Zatkulak said she wants to be able to spread important information to her community, but that’s hard to do without service.
“As a journalist, it's incredibly frustrating to have this information and try to be helping people who are still in the situation and they just can't access the information,” Zatkulak said.
Zatkulak said she is taking it one day at a time. Her and her family are relocated for now, about an hour away. They are safe, but she said it will be a long time for Asheville to be able to fully heal and rebuild from this storm.
“After this has gone from the headlines, Asheville is still going to be in a really difficult place,” Zatkulak said.