Motorcycle Accident Injury Attorneys in Washington, NC

Flooding in North Carolina has imperiled the operations of mines that produce the world’s purest quartz sand — an irreplaceable ingredient for manufacturing components at the heart of smartphones and other electronic devices.

The town of Spruce Pine, where these unique mines are located, remains in a dire situation, with power, water and cell service largely disconnected early Tuesday. While the floodwaters brought on by Helene have receded, local residents said many roads remained impassable. Some people were still trying desperately to confirm loved ones were safe.

The calamity has devastated this small town of about 2,200 along the North Toe River but is also expected to affect people around the world. The high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine’s mines is key for the production of semiconductors — the brains inside computing devices — as well as solar panels, fiber-optic cables and other industrial products.

“I don’t think the nation really realizes how this little, small town is so critical,” said Michael Vance, a local real estate developer who has been informally coordinating some relief efforts for Spruce Pine.

????

Follow Technology

Both major mine operators in Spruce Pine, Sibelco and the Quartz Corp., said they halted operations Thursday, the day before the center of the storm passed over western North Carolina, and did not yet know when work could resume. The companies said their immediate focus was ensuring employees were safe and contacting those who are still unreachable.

“Many people in the area, including our employees and their families, are facing displacement and significant disruption,” said Sibelco, a Belgian company. “We have confirmed the safety of most employees and are working diligently to contact those still unreachable due to ongoing power outages and communication challenges.”

Neither Sibelco nor the Quartz Corp. confirmed Monday whether their facilities were damaged or what kind of longer-term impact there may be to their output. The Quartz Corp. said that it had “no visibility” on when operations would restart and that some of its employees had joined local task forces to help restore basic services to the area.

“We are in a phase of assessing the situation and it is far too early to comment on the impact to high-purity quartz production,” said May Kristin Haugen, head of communications for the Quartz Corp., which is jointly owned by French and Norwegian companies. “Our priority now is people and the families being affected by this terrible storm.”

Dan Hutcheson, a veteran semiconductor industry analyst, said that while the mines will probably bounce back in time, consumers can expect to see higher prices for electronics in coming months. Manufacturers could temporarily shift to other sources for quartz, but that would introduce extra refining expenses.

Vance said Spruce Pine was still in a state of emergency on Monday. Residents had been told it would take at least three weeks for power to return, and more than a month for water.

“They are in desperate need of food and water,” he said. “They are still trying to find people. We just don’t know where some people are.”

Some mine employees were counted among the missing on Monday. One post in a Facebook group said that two groups of Sibelco workers had set out Friday from Red Hill, a short distance from Spruce Pine, to clear trees and debris from the roadways. The post said that while most of the 26 workers had since been confirmed safe, some remained unaccounted for.

The resiliency of the semiconductor supply chain has become a focus in Washington in recent years amid growing geopolitical tensions with China. In addition to powering consumer devices, chips are also the brains inside smart missiles and any other advanced military weapons.

U.S. officials have warned that the island of Taiwan is a bottleneck in the semiconductor supply chain and have pushed for the reshoring of chip manufacturing in the United States to avoid being overly reliant on East Asia for the critical components.

But the North Carolina floods reflect that natural disasters at home can also disrupt industries crucial for national security.

Hutcheson, the semiconductor analyst, said the chip supply chain has generally been able to absorb the shock of natural disasters, such as the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, without major shortages occurring. Manufacturers have some stockpiles in warehouses that they can draw on, he said, though disruptions can lead to elevated prices.

“It typically works its way out, and if you look at it on a year-over-year basis, you won’t see the impact,” he said of previous major natural disasters affecting the supply chain.

A fire in 2008 in Spruce Pine temporarily disrupted the global quartz supply.

According to Sibelco, the Spruce Pine quartz deposits were formed some 380 million years ago when the land masses that are now Africa and North America collided. A lack of water at the point of collision resulted in the unusual purity of the quartz in the area.

The minerals from Spruce Pine were already being used in electronics back in Thomas Edison’s era. More recently, the high-purity quartz is used to make crucibles, the containers used to melt down silicon to make silicon wafers for semiconductors.

Sharon McIntosh, a Spruce Pine resident, drove to Tennessee on Monday to purchase water and other supplies, and to find a cell signal to contact loved ones. She said that while the impact on the mines remained unclear, more visible infrastructure such as streets and the railroad had been washed out.

“The railroad won’t be coming through there for many months,” she said. “The downtown business district is destroyed. I don’t think it will recover from that.”

Updated October 2, 2024 at 10:09 a.m. EDT|Published October 1, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Hurricane Helene, fueled by converging weather and climate ingredients, hammered the mountains of North Carolina in recent days with staggering amounts of rain and catastrophic flooding. In one of the worst natural disasters the region has ever seen, more than 20 to 30 inches of rain fell in less than three days, washing homes and roads away and virtually destroying entire towns while cutting large areas off from power and communications.

Flooding from tropical systems is common in mountainous regions, even those as far inland as western North Carolina. But in this case, the devastating drenching was exacerbated primarily by three factors: 1) heavy rain that fell even before Helene made landfall; 2) the region’s steep terrain, which amplified the flood risk; and 3) record-setting levels of atmospheric moisture boosted by human-caused climate change.

The result was a rainfall event that should happen only once every 200 to 1,000 years and what appears to be the most rain ever recorded in the Appalachians from a tropical system.

The historic deluge began in western North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon into evening, more than 30 hours before the core of Helene came through, because of what’s known as a “predecessor rain event.” That is when moisture streaming hundreds of miles out ahead of the storm interacts with a dip in the jet stream to generate an initial round of heavy rain.

The storm itself doesn’t always pass over the same area as the predecessor event, but when it does, it can be disastrous.

“The really bad scenario is where … the tropical cyclone passes over that same area a day or two later,” said Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “The most impacts come from situations like this.”

After 8 to 12 inches of predecessor rainfall, the core of Helene plowed through the same region with a second round of torrential rain, on Friday, in areas where soils were already saturated and waterways swollen. That pushed rain totals as high as 20 to 30 inches — as much rain as would typically fall in three to five Septembers.

Some of the most devastating hurricane floods have occurred in the mountains, including flooding in Vermont from Hurricane Irene in 2011 and in Virginia from Hurricane Camille in 1969.

Western North Carolina, and specifically the Asheville area, is no stranger to tropical flooding, either. The remnants of two tropical systems combined for deadly flooding and mass destruction in 1916, while 2004 brought big floods from Hurricanes Frances and Ivan.

Mountains are particularly prone to severe flash flooding because of enhanced rainfall from upslope winds and water flowing down the steep terrain faster than on flatter land. As Helene approached from the south, the counterclockwise flow of wind around the storm’s low-pressure center resulted in persistent and increasingly strong winds from the southeast over western North Carolina.

“The southeast-facing slopes — those facing into the humid, low-level winds of Helene — forced that air to abruptly rise, cool to condensation, causing torrential rainout over the same locations,” said Jeff Halverson, a professor of meteorology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

All of that water then concentrated into rapidly flowing, convergent streams, running off so fast that it could not be absorbed by soils. “What results is a powerfully erosive, overland flow of water, soil, rock, vegetation and man-made structures — the features of flash floods, mudflows and debris flows,” Halverson said.

Some areas witnessed violent landslides and floodwaters that rose many feet in an hour’s time. Vast volumes of water and debris ultimately landed in downstream rivers. Several — such as the French Broad River and Swannanoa River in Asheville — crested at their highest levels on record, surpassing marks that had stood for more than a century.

Rainfall associated with Helene amounted to 20 trillion gallons across North Carolina. The amount of moisture transported by Helene from the Gulf of Mexico into the region was more than 1.5 times the previous record and three times the amount of moisture moved by the most extreme atmospheric rivers — or jets of heavy precipitation — that frequently bombard the West Coast during winter.

My analysis reveals that #Helene's integrated vapor transport (IVT) into western North Carolina (~3000 kg/m/s) was over 1.5 times the previous record (~1883 kg/m/s).IVT assesses the strength of atmospheric rivers.The magnitude is unprecedented for the region based on records. https://t.co/SWO6a49T64 pic.twitter.com/CPS7k1YUM5

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) September 29, 2024

Unusually warm ocean waters linked to human-caused climate change contributed to the extreme moisture levels. Tropical systems gain strength and capacity to transport moisture from warm upper ocean waters. Research has shown that storms occurring later in the season, like Helene, have a better chance of intensifying because, by then, warmer waters penetrate deeper into the ocean.

Helene developed and intensified over Gulf of Mexico waters experiencing a marine heat wave that warmed sea-surface temperatures as much as 3.5 to 4.5 degrees above average, while the upper layer of the ocean ranked as the second-warmest in more than 65 years of tracking.

One analysis published this week found human-caused climate change increased Helene’s rainfall by 50 percent; a second found the increase was around 20 percent.

Jason Samenow, Janice Kai Chen, Tim Meko and Laris Karklis contributed to this report.

correction

A caption in a previous version of this article incorrectly identified Highway 221 as Highway 22. The caption has been corrected.

By The Way

What to know about donating, volunteering and altering travel plans as Asheville organizes hurricane relief.

10 min

Updated October 1, 2024 at 10:14 a.m. EDT|Published September 30, 2024 at 4:19 p.m. EDT

Through the windows of the Market Place Restaurant in downtown Asheville, N.C., chef and owner William Dissen has only a partial view of the disaster left in Hurricane Helene’s wake.

There’s debris everywhere, Dissen said Monday, evidence of the “biblical flooding” that overtook Western North Carolina this weekend. The restaurant on Asheville’s historic Wall Street is without water but miraculously has power and WiFi, two luxuries allowing him to piece together what happened.

Hurricane Helene struck the Big Bend region of Florida as a Category 4 storm, becoming one of the largest storm systems ever to hit the Gulf Coast. Yet most of Helene’s devastation was wrought as the storm moved inland through the Carolinas and into Tennessee.

The latest: More than 100 deaths have been reported across six states, with North Carolina accounting for the most lives lost. The mountainous western portions of the state were hit the hardest, and many roads remain closed as residents struggle to access water and power. See photos of the storm’s destruction across North Carolina.

Helene’s impact: Many regions in Florida saw their worst storm surge ever as Helene made landfall. It’s estimated the storm caused up to $26 billion in property damage, and many homeowners may face major hurdles with insurance and rebuilding.

Accessibility statementSkip to main content

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Sign in

extreme weatherWeatherClimateCapital Weather GangEnvironmentClimate LabHurricanes

Theirs was only one tale of narrow escape, and of an unimaginable loss, that has begun to trickle out from the small communities that line the hills and valleys in and around North Carolina.

4 min

September 29, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. EDT

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — For nearly four decades, Beverly and Baxter Eller lived in the same modest home in Swannanoa, not far from here.

Family pictures hung on the walls. Sea shells collected from decades of trips sat in a glass bowl. Near their front porch on North Avenue, the Swannanoa River lazily wound its way past most days and the rolling ridges of the Blue Ridge rose gently above.

Extreme weather

HAND CURATED

Subscribe to comment and get the full experience. Choose your plan →

Company

Get The Post

Contact Us

Terms of Use

washingtonpost.com © 1996-2024 The Washington Post

Already a subscriber? Sign in

Get unlimited access to The Washington Post

ONE WEEK

$7 one-time payment

Does not renew.

MONTHLY

$1 every week for the first year

billed as $4 every 4 weeks

Cancel anytime.

YEARLY

$120 $40 for the first year

Cancel anytime.

Accessibility statementSkip to main content

Democracy Dies in Darkness

SubscribeSign in

(Julia Wall/The Washington Post)

Up next in Climate

0:59

Florida residents pick up the pieces after Helene

Yesterday

1:45

Atlanta residents on flooding: ‘Never anything like this’

Yesterday

1:26

Helene swamps coastal Florida community

Yesterday

0:34

Drone footage reveals storm damage in Perry

Yesterday

0:33

Man, dog rescued during Hurricane Helene

Yesterday

0:31

Authorities in Florida prepare for rescues by boat

2 days ago

0:41

Storm surge intensifies as Hurricane Helene approaches

2 days ago

0:56

Polish towns submerged underwater after heavy rainfall

1 week ago

0:44

Dozens dead after 'super typhoon' makes landfall in Vietnam

2 weeks ago

0:59

Thousands evacuated as California, Nevada wildfires spread

2 weeks ago

1:00

Coast Guard rescues two as Hurricane Debby nears Florida

August 5, 2024

0:35

Typhoon Gaemi submerges villages in the Philippines

July 24, 2024

0:36

Taiwan braces for Typhoon Gaemi landfall

July 24, 2024

0:59

Hurricane Beryl batters Texas coast upon landfall

July 8, 2024

0:33

Video shows calmness of the eye of Hurricane Beryl

July 8, 2024

0:52

Landslide in Papua New Guinea kills more than 2,000

May 26, 2024

0:32

This epic tornado stunned storm chasers and scientists alike

May 24, 2024

0:36

This epic tornado stunned storm chasers and scientists alike

May 24, 2024

1:58

Tornadoes touch down in Iowa amid severe weather warnings

May 21, 2024

0:13

The Aurora Borealis shines over the nation's capital

May 14, 2024

Climate

September 28, 2024 | 3:14 PM PDT

Video filmed on Sept. 28 shows a collapsed road and bridge along Highway 221 in Woodlawn and North Cove, N.C., after flooding from Hurricane Helene.