North Carolina is one of seven key battlegrounds that will likely decide the US presidential election, but western parts of the state are still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.
Life there is definitely far from back to normal, but residents are determined to cast their votes for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
In Black Mountain, one of the towns hardest hit by the deadly storm that ravaged multiple southeastern states in late September, people line up outside a polling center to vote early.
“I would have clawed or hitchhiked to get up here to vote for Donald Trump,” said Sally Wilson Pereira, who has been living with her daughter in South Carolina since the storm, but returned home to vote.
For the occasion, she wore a Trump t-shirt with the slogan “Fight… Fight… Fight” — words said by the Republican former president right after he survived an assassination attempt in July.
– Stigma –
About 15 miles (25 kilometers) from Black Mountain, the tourist hotspot of Asheville still bears the signs of Helene, which killed more 200 people.
A tractor trailer remains flipped in a ditch, its cab crushed. Elsewhere, another trailer rests on a roof. Metal debris is scattered along the river banks.
The metal wall of a ceramics shop is shredded.
Helene was the second-most deadly hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than 50 years, after Katrina. About half of the dead were in North Carolina.
But with less than a week to go before Election Day, the campaigns are not quitting in storm-hit zones, with so much on the line.
At the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Buncombe county, which includes Asheville, volunteers recruit people to get out the vote for Harris.
County party chair Kathie Kline said that in the immediate aftermath of the storm, clean-up efforts “kind of slowed everything down.”
“We made the decision not to contact people about the election for two weeks,” Kline told AFP.
“But as soon as that time passed, and as soon as we were relatively confident that most people were fine, we just jumped right back in.”
– ‘Unusual’ –
For Doug Brown, who heads the Republican Party in Buncombe, problems persist: the internet keeps getting cut, and he doesn’t have enough people to campaign, because many left the region — along with a lot of his party faithful.
“Now we have to find ways to find them and communicate with them and get them absentee ballots,” Brown noted.
Democratic Party volunteers Madison Sings and David Perry go door-to-door to meet residents and encourage them to vote.
They knocked on the door of Mary Ashton Inglis, who just returned home after being forced to evacuate for about a month — a first for her.
“A lot of people think of Asheville as a place for climate refugees to come. And so it was unusual to be hit by such a climate event,” she said at her doorstep.
“It really brings home the importance of voting this year, because obviously all of that impacts climate change,” added the Democratic voter.
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