NORTH CAROLINA, USA — We are getting an inside look at search and recovery efforts in Western Carolina. WFMY News 2 spoke to the NC Trooper K-9 Search and Recovery Team (NCTA K-9). This week, volunteers returned home from Western North Carolina.
The non-profit's Assistant Director Annissia Justice lives in Winston-Salem. She told us the team has never seen devastation like this before.
"Complete havoc has been wrecked upon," Justice recalled. "We went to Asheville, McDowell County and Madison County."
Justice and her dog Dahlia were deployed by the state to Asheville. The two are part of a team made up of three handlers and four dogs. They were tasked to find people who were unable to make it out of Hurricane Helene's destructive path. She said they recovered 20 people killed in the storm in 10 days.
"Asheville was the worst place we saw while working. There were semis everywhere. Every bridge that was still intact had a house on top of it," she shared. "It was devastating. The people that are still there were going around in their cars and picking up water out of puddles to be able to boil or flush their toilets."
Justice said she saw buildings up to three stories tall flooded and filled with mud. When the team got back, she immediately took her dog Dahlia to the vet out of precaution.
"We wanna make sure that they're happy - putting them through something like that. Safety is the number one priority," she said.
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