Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have all been seeing. If you've been watching anything
on social media, you watch the news, you've been seeing
the devastation created by Hurricane Helene along the East Coast
and especially in the Carolinas. Well, I happen to know
somebody from the Carolinas. Her name is Lindsay Burrell. She
is a news anchor for WHO thirteen out of Des Moines. Lindsay,
first of all, thanks so much for being on our
(00:20):
show today.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, e Marie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Okay, so refresh the people's mind here. I know you
and I have talked quite a bit, but explain exactly
where you're from.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, so I'm from born and raised the upstate of
South Carolina. So I'm from Spartanburg County. So for those
who kind of know South Carolina, the Greenville Spartanburg area,
and when it comes to Helene, who really hit Asheville,
North Carolina. My town of Inman, that's in Spartanburg County
(00:52):
is the second town into South Carolina from that South
Carolina North Carolina border going into Asheville. They got hit
pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, we were seeing incredible pictures, I mean, absolute devastation
in the entire area and This is not an area
that is immune to this. I know that there have
been many tropical storms. I'm sure as you were growing
up you probably had to deal with. But it's not
like we hear about New Orleans. You've heard about Houston
and the flooding Houston has. Obviously, Florida always seems to
(01:22):
be getting major storms. How frequent does the Carolinas have,
like in your lifetime, how frequent did it feel like
you had a hurricane that you had to deal with?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
You know, we would get them pretty consistently. What helped
us in this sense is usually they were hitting the
coasts of Charleston, so they weren't coming up from the Gulf,
and they weren't having to pick up all of that
warm water, which typically makes them stronger. But where I'm from,
more inland and the upstate, you know, kind of close
to the North Carolina line, pivoting that Ashville area, we
(01:58):
would always just kind of get the back winds, so
if anything, we would just get a ton of rain
for a few days, very minor, minor flooding. That's very
different from you know, here in the Midwest, We're used
to getting rain very consistently. In the South, so that's
really the worst we would ever get with Helene. It
just barreled straight through Florida up to Georgia and really
(02:23):
really hit our area hard. So no one was disprepared.
You know. We thought, Okay, we're just getting those back
winds that were kind of used to but it ended
up being so much more than that. And especially for Ashville,
North Carolina. My family and I go there all the time.
That's nestled at the bottom of the mountains right there,
you have the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I mean, they
(02:45):
really suffered from all of the rain and water and
flooding that they had. No one was prepared. So some
people say, well, gosh, why didn't they know, Why didn't
they evacuate? Ashville's never seen this ever.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
We're speaking with Lindsay Burrell.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
She is an anchor on WHO thirteen but also a
native of South Carolina Asheville, North Carolina. That is so
far inland. I can't remember a city that has been
that affected that far from a coast by a tropical
storm or a hurricane. And you kind of talked a
little bit about the path that kind of created the
strength and it just kind of timed out at the
(03:21):
worst possible moment for this. But can you explain what
you know your family has been seeing in that upstate
South Carolina region. I know that you know social media,
we've been able to kind of see it vicariously through video.
But what has from your conversations been with your family
is they have experienced this firsthand.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I haven't gotten to talk to them a ton. My
parents have actually had to drive to different towns to
be able to call me and my siblings. They have
been without power. They're not even expecting power till possibly Thursday.
But a big difference in the landscape of South Carolina
that I want our West listeners to know is there
(04:02):
is no room for empty in the South. And what
I mean by that is, you know, as I've lived
here in the Midwest, there are trees, yes, but you
have huge planes in South Carolina. All of that all
of think of all the flat land that Iowa has
that is densely wooded areas, so there's so much tree damage.
(04:22):
Those go right up to power lines. We have no
power lines in the ground in that area, kind of
how we have here in the Midwest, because we're not
used to getting those kinds of winds. So the infrastructure
isn't built around it, so so many lines are down,
trees are down everywhere. I feel very grateful. Everyone in
my family is okay, but we've had neighbors who have
(04:44):
lost people. We have family friends who have lost people
because trees go down and you know, the live wires,
So there's been a lot of loss of life, but
just kind of so people can know. Yet they're not
used to that. So the infrastructure and built for it,
and with all the trees, the damage is just insane.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It's tough because I have only really experienced one tropical storm,
and that's when I was on vacation in Florida, and
it just like perpetually is it is weird. It just
kind of sat there and just kind of kept spinning
and spinning, and it just kind of for about four days.
And this was a terrible time obviously to be in
South Florida during a vacation, but it was just like
(05:26):
it just never ended.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
It felt like it never ended.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The waves in which you know, like the storms you
can see it on like radar, how it spins and everything.
Is that one of the main factors that you think
this became such a devastating and damaging storm, especially inland.
Is that it just never really led up with a
lot of that precipitation. Instead of kind of just being
a storm that passed through, it just kind of kept
(05:50):
piling on.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And it got so much stronger as it went through
the Gulf too. So that's spinning. And you have to
think where it hit in Florida. So it hit more
in the pan Handle. Well that's not a very you know,
dense area of Florida. So before you know it, it's
already traveling into Georgia and then the Carolinas area as well.
So yeah, I mean they expected some rain, I can tell,
(06:14):
you know from that area. I know my parents were
expecting rain. They were not expecting anything like this. They
said that this has pretty much been the strongest storm
that they've had to deal with. I think since my
parents were very young. Our county was in a state
of emergency. You couldn't get nine one one individuals. We
know we're having a hard time with that. People who
(06:36):
lost individuals in their family. A lot of that was
because they couldn't call for help. That thankfully has been restored,
but it's taking hours for people to get gassed My
family drove about an hour and a half to Columbia,
the capitol, just to be able to get some supplies
and get a warm meal.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Gee wiz, there are so many different angles to storms
in different spots of America. We talk about, you know,
like hey, when it's thirty degrees in parts of Texas,
they have no idea how to handle that because there
is not like the infrastructure isn't really there. That people
don't have heaters in their house in a lot of
(07:17):
places because they just never feel like they need that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Is there anything to be learned here?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is this you think a freak thing that you know
Inland Carolina was hit so hard by this? Or is
there anything I guess maybe that people that live there
can prepare for for potentially another storm like this in
the future. What do you think is the lesson that
can be learned from this? If there is one.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I can tell you my parents' biggest takeaway is they
just had to get rid of their generator maybe a
year ago because it had completely you know, messed up,
and it wasn't working anymore. And having that stuff that
region of the United States, because as I told you,
we usually just get the very little back winds of hurricanes.
We don't get tornadoes really in that area. We don't
(08:06):
get snow. We are kind of protected, usually in a
little bubble that doesn't see the worst of weather. And
I think my family, my friends that I've spoken to
who are there, have thought, Okay, we do need to
be prepared. Just because we're so many miles inland doesn't
mean that storms can't come from different areas. You know,
we're always expecting them to come through the Charleston area.
(08:27):
No one expected this, so I think it's kind of
expecting that unexpected and being prepared even when most of
the time we feel really safe and you know, kind
of out of touch from stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, Ken, can I ask what you're most afraid of?
I guess in terms of weather on a typical situation,
like what's the most common kind of you know, natural
disaster type thing that you guys would ever have to
worry about.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Otherwise it mostly is hurricanes, but just those back winds
given we are so inland, so but we're also used
to rain, so we don't get that much flooding, so
we've never had to worry so much. No, I will
joke for our Midwest listeners right here. We always have
been afraid of the snow. They know this. We don't
have the infrastructure for that. So we get snow once
(09:14):
every three to five years once, so that you know,
always shuts down this state. But we understand that, Hey,
if we're getting snow, if we're getting that kind of stuff,
we just hunker in place. But typically when it comes
to hurricanes, we just always know there's gonna be rain,
there's gonna be issues, maybe a little bit of power,
but nothing like this. Like I said, they're expecting to
(09:36):
go a week plus without any power, and it's really tough.
A lot of downtrees. That area just has really really
been hit. And then individuals we know in Asheville. I
mean you just Chimney Rock area, the Biltmore village, it's
completely destroyed.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, the pictures there is unbelievable that, especially a hurricane
of all things, his has done that that far. And
I mean that's it's pretty close to like the border
to Tennessee, right.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yes, I believe Asheville's about five hundred miles from the coast.
So even I forty, which is a major interstate, and
the people have probably seen the photos that leads you know,
all through North Carolina that can go into Tennessee as well.
Half of that road has been completely washed away due
to the high impact flooding and rain and damage that
(10:27):
they've seen there. And you know, all my friends, I
even have my college friends who are in the Charlotte,
North Carolina area or the York South Carolina area as well,
which kind of butts that North Carolina border. They have
huge trees down. They were out without power for a
little bit, but now they have power back in most areas.
(10:48):
But you have to think, there's all these old, beautiful trees,
and there's so many of them. It's so a dense area.
They're all down, and that's just caused so much damage.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's something that we're gonna be playing very close attention
to and the storm of the year. To this point,
there have been big ones even in the Midwest as well,
but in terms of tropical storms and hurricanes, this is
about as damaging as we have seen in recent years.
Lindsay Barrell, we thank you so much for your time,
and obviously our thoughts are prayers with you, your entire family,
(11:19):
and anybody that you know down there in the Carolinas.
As you guys continue to recover down there.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh, thank you very much.
We have all been seeing. If you've been watching anything
on social media, you watch the news, you've been seeing
the devastation created by Hurricane Helene along the East Coast
and especially in the Carolinas. Well, I happen to know
somebody from the Carolinas. Her name is Lindsay Burrell. She
is a news anchor for WHO thirteen out of Des Moines. Lindsay,
first of all, thanks so much for being on our
(00:20):
show today.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, e Marie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Okay, so refresh the people's mind here. I know you
and I have talked quite a bit, but explain exactly
where you're from.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, so I'm from born and raised the upstate of
South Carolina. So I'm from Spartanburg County. So for those
who kind of know South Carolina, the Greenville Spartanburg area,
and when it comes to Helene, who really hit Asheville,
North Carolina. My town of Inman, that's in Spartanburg County
(00:52):
is the second town into South Carolina from that South
Carolina North Carolina border going into Asheville. They got hit
pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, we were seeing incredible pictures, I mean, absolute devastation
in the entire area and This is not an area
that is immune to this. I know that there have
been many tropical storms. I'm sure as you were growing
up you probably had to deal with. But it's not
like we hear about New Orleans. You've heard about Houston
and the flooding Houston has. Obviously, Florida always seems to
(01:22):
be getting major storms. How frequent does the Carolinas have,
like in your lifetime, how frequent did it feel like
you had a hurricane that you had to deal with?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
You know, we would get them pretty consistently. What helped
us in this sense is usually they were hitting the
coasts of Charleston, so they weren't coming up from the Gulf,
and they weren't having to pick up all of that
warm water, which typically makes them stronger. But where I'm from,
more inland and the upstate, you know, kind of close
to the North Carolina line, pivoting that Ashville area, we
(01:58):
would always just kind of get the back winds, so
if anything, we would just get a ton of rain
for a few days, very minor, minor flooding. That's very
different from you know, here in the Midwest, We're used
to getting rain very consistently. In the South, so that's
really the worst we would ever get with Helene. It
just barreled straight through Florida up to Georgia and really
(02:23):
really hit our area hard. So no one was disprepared.
You know. We thought, Okay, we're just getting those back
winds that were kind of used to but it ended
up being so much more than that. And especially for Ashville,
North Carolina. My family and I go there all the time.
That's nestled at the bottom of the mountains right there,
you have the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I mean, they
(02:45):
really suffered from all of the rain and water and
flooding that they had. No one was prepared. So some
people say, well, gosh, why didn't they know, Why didn't
they evacuate? Ashville's never seen this ever.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
We're speaking with Lindsay Burrell.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
She is an anchor on WHO thirteen but also a
native of South Carolina Asheville, North Carolina. That is so
far inland. I can't remember a city that has been
that affected that far from a coast by a tropical
storm or a hurricane. And you kind of talked a
little bit about the path that kind of created the
strength and it just kind of timed out at the
(03:21):
worst possible moment for this. But can you explain what
you know your family has been seeing in that upstate
South Carolina region. I know that you know social media,
we've been able to kind of see it vicariously through video.
But what has from your conversations been with your family
is they have experienced this firsthand.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I haven't gotten to talk to them a ton. My
parents have actually had to drive to different towns to
be able to call me and my siblings. They have
been without power. They're not even expecting power till possibly Thursday.
But a big difference in the landscape of South Carolina
that I want our West listeners to know is there
(04:02):
is no room for empty in the South. And what
I mean by that is, you know, as I've lived
here in the Midwest, there are trees, yes, but you
have huge planes in South Carolina. All of that all
of think of all the flat land that Iowa has
that is densely wooded areas, so there's so much tree damage.
(04:22):
Those go right up to power lines. We have no
power lines in the ground in that area, kind of
how we have here in the Midwest, because we're not
used to getting those kinds of winds. So the infrastructure
isn't built around it, so so many lines are down,
trees are down everywhere. I feel very grateful. Everyone in
my family is okay, but we've had neighbors who have
(04:44):
lost people. We have family friends who have lost people
because trees go down and you know, the live wires,
So there's been a lot of loss of life, but
just kind of so people can know. Yet they're not
used to that. So the infrastructure and built for it,
and with all the trees, the damage is just insane.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It's tough because I have only really experienced one tropical storm,
and that's when I was on vacation in Florida, and
it just like perpetually is it is weird. It just
kind of sat there and just kind of kept spinning
and spinning, and it just kind of for about four days.
And this was a terrible time obviously to be in
South Florida during a vacation, but it was just like
(05:26):
it just never ended.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
It felt like it never ended.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The waves in which you know, like the storms you
can see it on like radar, how it spins and everything.
Is that one of the main factors that you think
this became such a devastating and damaging storm, especially inland.
Is that it just never really led up with a
lot of that precipitation. Instead of kind of just being
a storm that passed through, it just kind of kept
(05:50):
piling on.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And it got so much stronger as it went through
the Gulf too. So that's spinning. And you have to
think where it hit in Florida. So it hit more
in the pan Handle. Well that's not a very you know,
dense area of Florida. So before you know it, it's
already traveling into Georgia and then the Carolinas area as well.
So yeah, I mean they expected some rain, I can tell,
(06:14):
you know from that area. I know my parents were
expecting rain. They were not expecting anything like this. They
said that this has pretty much been the strongest storm
that they've had to deal with. I think since my
parents were very young. Our county was in a state
of emergency. You couldn't get nine one one individuals. We
know we're having a hard time with that. People who
(06:36):
lost individuals in their family. A lot of that was
because they couldn't call for help. That thankfully has been restored,
but it's taking hours for people to get gassed My
family drove about an hour and a half to Columbia,
the capitol, just to be able to get some supplies
and get a warm meal.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Gee wiz, there are so many different angles to storms
in different spots of America. We talk about, you know,
like hey, when it's thirty degrees in parts of Texas,
they have no idea how to handle that because there
is not like the infrastructure isn't really there. That people
don't have heaters in their house in a lot of
(07:17):
places because they just never feel like they need that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Is there anything to be learned here?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is this you think a freak thing that you know
Inland Carolina was hit so hard by this? Or is
there anything I guess maybe that people that live there
can prepare for for potentially another storm like this in
the future. What do you think is the lesson that
can be learned from this? If there is one.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I can tell you my parents' biggest takeaway is they
just had to get rid of their generator maybe a
year ago because it had completely you know, messed up,
and it wasn't working anymore. And having that stuff that
region of the United States, because as I told you,
we usually just get the very little back winds of hurricanes.
We don't get tornadoes really in that area. We don't
(08:06):
get snow. We are kind of protected, usually in a
little bubble that doesn't see the worst of weather. And
I think my family, my friends that I've spoken to
who are there, have thought, Okay, we do need to
be prepared. Just because we're so many miles inland doesn't
mean that storms can't come from different areas. You know,
we're always expecting them to come through the Charleston area.
(08:27):
No one expected this, so I think it's kind of
expecting that unexpected and being prepared even when most of
the time we feel really safe and you know, kind
of out of touch from stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, Ken, can I ask what you're most afraid of?
I guess in terms of weather on a typical situation,
like what's the most common kind of you know, natural
disaster type thing that you guys would ever have to
worry about.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Otherwise it mostly is hurricanes, but just those back winds
given we are so inland, so but we're also used
to rain, so we don't get that much flooding, so
we've never had to worry so much. No, I will
joke for our Midwest listeners right here. We always have
been afraid of the snow. They know this. We don't
have the infrastructure for that. So we get snow once
(09:14):
every three to five years once, so that you know,
always shuts down this state. But we understand that, Hey,
if we're getting snow, if we're getting that kind of stuff,
we just hunker in place. But typically when it comes
to hurricanes, we just always know there's gonna be rain,
there's gonna be issues, maybe a little bit of power,
but nothing like this. Like I said, they're expecting to
(09:36):
go a week plus without any power, and it's really tough.
A lot of downtrees. That area just has really really
been hit. And then individuals we know in Asheville. I
mean you just Chimney Rock area, the Biltmore village, it's
completely destroyed.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, the pictures there is unbelievable that, especially a hurricane
of all things, his has done that that far. And
I mean that's it's pretty close to like the border
to Tennessee, right.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yes, I believe Asheville's about five hundred miles from the coast.
So even I forty, which is a major interstate, and
the people have probably seen the photos that leads you know,
all through North Carolina that can go into Tennessee as well.
Half of that road has been completely washed away due
to the high impact flooding and rain and damage that
(10:27):
they've seen there. And you know, all my friends, I
even have my college friends who are in the Charlotte,
North Carolina area or the York South Carolina area as well,
which kind of butts that North Carolina border. They have
huge trees down. They were out without power for a
little bit, but now they have power back in most areas.
(10:48):
But you have to think, there's all these old, beautiful trees,
and there's so many of them. It's so a dense area.
They're all down, and that's just caused so much damage.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's something that we're gonna be playing very close attention
to and the storm of the year. To this point,
there have been big ones even in the Midwest as well,
but in terms of tropical storms and hurricanes, this is
about as damaging as we have seen in recent years.
Lindsay Barrell, we thank you so much for your time,
and obviously our thoughts are prayers with you, your entire family,
(11:19):
and anybody that you know down there in the Carolinas.
As you guys continue to recover down there.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh, thank you very much.
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