Americans throughout the Southeast have been stranded by Hurricane Helene without power, water, or cell service — and many have lost their homes and even lives. The devastation is unimaginable, and the Robertson family has witnessed it all firsthand.

Al and Lisa Robertson were staying in Black Mountain, which he explains was hit with 20-plus inches of rain in two days — before Hurricane Helene reached them.

“There was just the perfect storm, and I say that in a negative way,” Al says. “This one had some bite to it.”

“First you’re just praying, you know, spare us, and then you start praying about the people down lower ‘cause you think of down the mountain, this isn’t going to be good. Lisa and I were staying at a little house, kind of pretty much close to the top. I’m praying because I was worried about a mudslide,” he continues.

When the morning came around, Al recalls that “it was like a war zone.” And after trying to get out of the mountains, they realized they were landlocked.

“We make it about half a mile on I-40 and mudslide,” he explains. “Trees on the road, all this stuff, can’t go this way. So then we’re trying to find is there another way around? Nope. Everything over there’s shut down.”

“So then you start thinking, what if we go south? Nope. Closed. There’s a river across the interstate,” he continues. “So we take off north, planning to get high enough up, maybe above the worst damage to cut across and then go east. We get to Tennessee, we’ve been driving a couple hours, and the interstate is collapsed.”

“We’re trapped, we cannot leave,” he adds. “We have no phones, we have no electricity at this point, we don’t even have a place to stay, but we do have family. And I’m thinking, I mean, there’s a helplessness that comes over you at that moment, because I got half a tank of gas and there’s no gas stations.”

As other people from out of town were waiting for places to open up, Al recalls realizing that those in electric cars were “doomed.”

“There’s no electricity for you to power your vehicle with,” he explains.

However, Al and Lisa did see signs of hope in the “rednecks” who were prepared and used that to help others.

“They helped other people. They would go to their neighbors' [houses], and we saw a whole truckload of people just going from place to place, helping,” Lisa says.

Tragically, there are still around a thousand people missing and over a hundred people have been confirmed dead.

“It’s going to wind up being devastating numbers for sure,” Al says, sadly.

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