Three rivers that swelled to deadly levels during Hurricane Helene on Sept. 27 – the French Broad, Nolichucky and Pigeon – start in North Carolina and empty into Douglas Lake. They transformed the waters of the popular recreation and fishing destination to brown muck and left a one-square-mile island of wreckage after the historic floods.

Human traffickers are trickling into western North Carolina to exploit the trail of vulnerability that Hurricane Helene left in its wake, a law enforcement representative warned at a recent North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission meeting.