Chimney Rock and Bat Cave are typically swarming with tourists this time of year — but now even the town’s own inhabitants have been driven out by the hurricane’s destruction
Mountainside North Carolina towns have been “forever changed” and cut off from the world by the wrath of Hurricane Helene — with residents calling the destruction “absolutely overwhelming.”
“Chimney Rock is just destroyed, it’s forever changed,” said 59-year-old Brett Johnson, a resident of the small tourist town about an hour southeast of Asheville.
“There were beautiful homes all along here, where now there’s just dirt and rocks,” he told The Post. “Where that bank should be there was a brewery, Mexican restaurants, hotels — they’re all just gone.”
Rather than being flooded with tourists, Chimney Rock has spent the days since Hurricane Helene deluged with cops, clean-up crews and engineers from the North Carolina Department of Transportation mapping the damage wrought by the storm that left at least 232 dead across the Southeast.
“On a beautiful day like this, this place would be packed with tourists — packed, packed — but we’re the only ones here. All our neighbors left,” Johnson said.
And the few those who remain, like Johnson and his wife, have referred to themselves as “the sole survivors.”
“There were a few residents around cleaning up their places and gathering what they could but they looked like they were still traumatized,” said 53-year-old Teddy Cooper, who lives down the road in Lake Lure.
