Officials, staff and neighbors describe response after severe Hendersonville storm

Hendersonville officials, emergency staff and residents described a fraught response to an unusually severe storm that flooded neighborhoods, disrupted communications and required extended rescue and recovery operations.

City and emergency officials said they monitored forecasts and activated preparations well before landfall, directing public works to clear storm drains, selecting a site for an emergency operations center and declaring states of emergency. "We were monitoring the weather, but we also were really, trying to to make sure we were doing preparation," an agency official overseeing emergency operations said.

A late forecast update about 5–6 p.m. after a council meeting prompted leaders to move into an all-hands response. "This is probably gonna be the storm of the century," an operations official said, and officials moved the EOC from the city operations center to the newly opened Fire Station 1 because the operations center later flooded despite being outside the 500‑year floodplain.

Responders described an overwhelming surge of calls in the hours after the storm struck. One emergency manager said they arrived at the EOC about 4 a.m. as calls began "one after another" for downed trees, flooding and welfare checks. Staff operated an 8 a.m.–8 p.m. call center that logged contact details in spreadsheets so EMS could make welfare checks for families phone lines could not reach.

The loss of cellular and some internet communications posed a major challenge. "We were not able to communicate with anybody, whether it be our peers at Henderson County, whether it be the state, or our own staff who were out in the community when the cell phones went down and went dark," an emergency official said. Teams fell back on radios and, when available, satellite devices. Private providers deployed temporary cellular equipment; speakers said T‑Mobile and others provided cellular-on-wheels units that helped in pockets but that radio shortages hampered early coordination.

Officials described repeatedly urging residents in low‑lying areas to evacuate; some residents declined, and responders said crews later recovered fatalities. "We were begging them to leave their homes… not once, not twice, but 3 and 4 times," an emergency responder said, and added that crews anticipated and later encountered fatalities during early searches.

Logistics and supply concerns were acute. Officials reported efforts to secure a large generator to power the Ingalls distribution center to prevent food spoilage and bottlenecks, and they cautioned there could be shortages of groceries and gasoline. Local churches and neighborhood groups organized sustained shipments of supplies—diapers, food and batteries—that continued for weeks and at times exceeded local distribution capacity.

Multiple speakers credited years of preparedness and infrastructure investments for faster restoration of some services. A utility official said Hendersonville's prior spending on the water and utility system and practicing incident command protocols made a substantial difference in recovery speed, though such upgrades are costly.

Residents and staff repeatedly praised cross‑department teamwork and neighbor-to-neighbor aid. "People were feeding each other," one resident said, describing block‑level sharing of meals and resources during outages. Speakers also warned of opportunistic bad actors who sometimes try to take advantage of crises, even as volunteer response from across the country arrived.

Officials closed by urging remembrance of those lost, recognizing staff and leaders, and affirming community resilience. Multiple participants repeated the phrase, "Hendersonville strong," as leaders described ongoing recovery work and next steps for restoration.

The accounts in this report come from a collection of statements given during a city forum on storm response; officials described operational decisions, communications failures, fatalities in flooded areas, logistics challenges and the role of volunteers in recovery. No formal votes or policy actions were recorded in the transcript; next steps described were continuing recovery operations and assessing infrastructure needs.