Tracy Stevens had left her house in Chimney Rock Thursday night and gotten a room at the Lake Lure Inn, which had a generator and was staying open through the storm. The two towns, both popular tourist destinations, are walking distance to one another, joined by a bridge across the Broad River in the mountains of Rutherford County.

Search and rescue workers were fanning through the small town of Chimney Rock east of Asheville Monday after it was almost entirely wiped out.

Lake Lure, a popular tourist destination, is now one of many communities that has been both utterly transformed and largely cut off from the outside world for days after Helene.