- As of Thursday, Oct. 31, four people in Asheville, North Carolina, have been unaccounted for since Hurricane Helene hit the city, an Asheville Fire Department spokesperson told PEOPLE
- The number of deaths in Asheville related to the storm remains at nine
- “[Officers] were able to just help a lot of people, between the evacuations and the rescues,” Asheville Police Chief Mike Lamb recalled of search and rescue efforts to The Asheville Citizen Times
One month after Hurricane Helene hit the city of Asheville in North Carolina, four people from the city remain missing while authorities recently recalled search and rescue operations following the storm.
In an email to PEOPLE on Thursday, Oct. 31, a spokesperson for the Asheville Fire Department confirmed that four people in Asheville have yet to be accounted for — with one of them presumed dead. The Asheville Police Department has been working with the family.
The three people who remain missing, according to the Asheville Fire Department spokesperson, are Stephanie Lynn Hudgins, Marcus Aaron Sexton and Crystal Frances Merritt.
“Meanwhile, the investigation and search efforts continue for the others still listed as missing, reflecting the ongoing complexities of the case,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the death toll in Asheville linked to Helene is currently at nine.
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Helene has been responsible for 101 deaths in the state as of Oct. 31.
In an interview with The Asheville Citizen Times, Asheville Police Chief Mike Lamb recalled a detective seeing resident Megan Drye “floating down the river.” Drye was rescued, but her parents and son, Micah, 7, died after their home collapsed into the Swannanoa River.
“[Officers] were able to just help a lot of people, between the evacuations and the rescues,” Lamb told the newspaper. “It was really, you know, they saved a lot of lives that day.”
Captain Joe Silberman of the Asheville Police Department also recalled search and rescue efforts in the aftermath of Helene when the number of missing people grew.
“I think we ended up at about 410 different address locations that we had to go to,” Silberman told ABC affiliate WLOS. “We came close to around 1,000 individuals that we were deeply concerned about. There was seven people who were in dire circumstances.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that were the FBI not here, we wouldn’t have been able to find a good deal of those 400 people,” added Silberman. “At one point, the National Guard sent a gargantuan amount of people for one last push of targeted searches for high-concern areas. That allowed us to be as successful as we were in this.”
Lamb told the Citizen Times that, amid the loss of cell phone service at the time, police received an “influx” of emails from people checking on the status of their loved ones. A list of 350 people was compiled, which took a week to run through as officers searched in neighborhoods. The number of those actively missing later dwindled down to nine as of Thursday, Oct. 24.
“There were three others that we couldn’t find initially, but knew that they went into the water,” Lamb told the Citizen Times. “Of those three, we were able to recover two. There’s still one that we haven’t recovered yet.”
Jason Cimbolo, an Army veteran who was evacuated when Helene first hit Asheville, told WLOS that he noticed that police officers have remained active in the search operations.
“I’ve seen a daily presence from them every single day,” he said. “They’ve been doing their job the best they can. We’ll be sitting here late at night, and we’ll hear one of their cars go screaming into the night. They’re going to save somebody else.”
In addition to North Carolina, Hurricane Helene, which made landfall near Perry, Florida, on Sept. 26, and has also resulted in fatalities in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia. As of Oct. 23, the overall death toll from Helene stands at 224, the USA Today reported.
