Watch: Helene’s powerful flooding saws building in half on Asheville river

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Extreme flooding caused by Hurricane Helene carried cars, whole homes and partial buildings down the Swannanoa River in Asheville, video taken from the third floor of a building shows.

Video taken on Sept. 27 by Chris Faber, co-owner of the Times Bar and Coffee shop, shows half of a building rushing down the Swannanoa River and being sawed in half by a power pole, narrowly missing the videographer’s apartment building.

It only takes 1 foot of rushing water to knock someone off their feet, according to the National Weather Service, but Helene’s floods carried whole communities away.

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Faber said the video was recorded from the third floor of his building in the Biltmore Village neighborhood of Asheville. Flooding destroyed the first and much of the second floors of the apartment building, but Faber said the third floor remained intact through the worst of the flooding.

A wall gets cut in half by a power pole during flooding on the French Broad River in Asheville on Sept. 27, 2024.

(Chris Faber/The Times Bar/TMX)

Faber’s video shows a large part of a building narrowly missing his own building but then crashing into a power pole, being cut right down the middle.

“It just ripped it in (expletive) half,” Faber said in the video. “That missed our building by, I mean, feet?”

With rainfall from Helene, the Swannanoa River at Biltmore reached a 26-foot flood level, nearly 10 feet above the major flood level. The Swannanoa connects to the French Broad, which runs along Asheville’s River Arts District and reached a flood stage of nearly 25 feet, the highest since Asheville measurements began in 1895, according to the National Weather Service. The flooding was nearly 7 feet above the major flood stage. 

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The Times Bar is raising money for its employees impacted by the floods and others in Ashville’s food and drink industry. 

North Carolina has so far seen the most deaths from Helene, with nearly 100 fatalities, and more than 60 deaths coming from Buncombe County, where Asheville is located.

More than a week after Helene’s destruction began, many parts of Buncombe County still lack power, running water or communication access. 

Numerous people are also reported missing or unaccounted for, but an exact number has not yet been released.