The last time Drew McLean’s parents saw him, he was surprised by the power of Tropical Storm Helen as it washed away their home in the mountains of North Carolina.
A large tree split in the front yard, and another Mr. He and his mother also found McLean’s car flooded and pushed onto its side.
Amid the confusion, Mr. McLean, 45, offered her mother a comforting thought: “God is still on His throne,” she said.
Mr. McLean has been missing for a week since landing in the storm last Friday.
Sitting at the back door of their secluded home in the Black Mountains on Thursday, his parents wiped tears from their eyes and held out hope that he would be found, even as they feared the worst.
The McLeans are in a fraught and fragile state, shared by many across western North Carolina and other regions crushed by Hurricane Helen. The extent of the disaster, along with a lack of phone and internet service after the storm, has left families unsure of what happened to their loved ones.
The storm’s death toll has surpassed 225 in six states, but officials in North Carolina say the situation is changing too quickly to calculate how many people are still missing. In Buncombe County, where Black Mountain is one of several small towns outside Asheville, more than 200 people were missing, officials said Thursday afternoon.
Officials are inundated with requests for health checks. A spokesman for Haywood County, west of Asheville, said officials have completed 860 such checks since the storm. And in Rutherford County, southeast of Asheville, officials confirmed more than 800 people were safe.
Although not all can be completed as some areas are inaccessible, requests are still coming in.
Rutherford County spokeswoman Kerry Giles said it’s difficult to estimate the number of missing people because officials are working from multiple lists compiled from social media, 911 calls and emails. Loss of power and cellular service can complicate the task.
“It’s a long process, and it’s for a person,” Ms. Giles said.
Lack of immediate answers can be frustrating.
Ranee LaPointe, 46, of Athol, Mass., is looking for her father, Russell Wilber, 67, and stepmother, Charlene Wilber, 70. The couple has been missing since Sept. 26 from a campground in Newland, NC. They told the workers there that they were going to wait out the storm.
A few days later, campground staff discovered the couple’s camper was missing, and Mrs. Mrs Lapointe said Wilbur’s car was “completely destroyed” and the couple were nowhere to be found. Since then, Mrs. Lapointe has been unable to sleep for more than an hour at a time. He spends his nights scanning the internet for videos and photos.
The lack of answers is paralyzing, Ms. LaPointe said. With each passing day, it is hard to believe that her relatives are still alive.
“I was expecting to get a call in the first few days and I could go downstairs and say, ‘Don’t ever do that to me again,'” Ms Lapointe said through tears.
Laurel Hill, Fla. Virginia Crider, 34, of Asheville said she is spending “every waking hour” trying to find her friend Joseph Spencer Ramirez, 36, who appears to have disappeared last weekend while homeless in the Asheville area.
Mrs. Crider, Mr. He said he was accessing Ramirez’s social media contacts, posting on Facebook groups for missing persons and making Tiktok videos.
“It would be hard to find a homeless person on a typical day in a typical city,” she gasps. “How do you start when there’s so much destruction and so many missing people? The scenes I’ve seen are devastating and you’d think there’s no way he’s going to survive.
Some bright spots can be found in desperate posts on Facebook. “Both are safe,” one wrote of a missing woman and her daughter.
At Black Mountain, the McLeans received help from volunteers on Thursday who searched the mountainside and its deep canyons for their son, but came up empty-handed again.
“I couldn’t find anything but swampland,” said a man who gave his name only as Ax and had come from Pennsylvania to help with relief efforts.
Many volunteers were on the steep, windy road, Mr. They searched for McLean, while John Bridgers, founder and chief executive of the volunteer rescue group Cajun Navy 2016, flew a drone to find him. A week after the storm, Mr. Few believed McLean would be found alive. The family and their neighbors could not be reached for an update Friday.
On Thursday, his father was bracing for the bad news.
“God’s hands will be on Drew if he’s still on earth,” Ron McLean, 73, said. “If he is no longer here, he is already there in his arms.”
Mr. McLean, whose parents said he may be on the autism spectrum but has not been diagnosed, lives in an apartment under his parents and spent last Friday morning with his father, using rocks and concrete blocks to build a makeshift dam in the driveway. As the water rushed down the hill, the dam was quickly released.
At some point that morning, Mr. McLean left the property. This was not something he had done before.
“We never knew where he was,” said his mother, Fourie McLean, 70. “It was just not his character.”
His parents called and texted him to no avail. “Please come home,” his mother texted him the day after he disappeared. “We turn on the generator every now and then to see if we’ve heard from you. We love you, Dad & Mom.”
The message could not be delivered because cell phone service is excellent.
After searching throughout Thursday, Mr. Volunteers – some covered in mud and sweat – rested as they tried to find McLean. One said that parts of the valley they were searching looked like a wasteland.
On the hill, the Macleans were on the porch with pictures of their son scattered on a table. Neighbors kept coming, one bringing prescriptions and an energy bar.
The McLeans said Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office deputies checked on them and took information about their son. Sensing Ron McLean’s deep distress, a deputy asked if it was safe to still have guns at home.
“I’ve lost a lot of hope,” Ron McLean admitted Thursday, recounting his conversation with the Companion. “But I still have a responsibility to be here for my family.”
