‘Nowhere is safe’: shattered Asheville shows stunning reach of climate crisis

The historic North Carolina city was touted as a climate haven' - a reputation deadly Hurricane Helene left in ruins

Nestled in the bucolic Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina and far from any coast, Asheville was touted as a climate haven" from extreme weather. Now the historic city has been devastated and cut off by Hurricane Helene's catastrophic floodwaters, in a stunning display of the climate crisis's unlimited reach in the United States.

Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland.