The Southeast is dealing with the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene after the storm destroyed entire communities from Florida to North Carolina with flooding and mudslides that caused widespread damage.

Carl McPeak was visiting Asheville for work from Arkansas when he got stuck in Helene’s wrath.

Like plenty of others, “I didn’t think it was going to be this bad,” he said, adding he thought it was just going to be a “bit of rain.”

That was until he saw shipping containers, semi-trucks and propane tanks “floating by” in the flooding, he said.

He said it got real for him “when I woke up this morning and the water was still there and I was like, Oh man. I’m not getting out. I’m going to be stuck here’” with “no power, no cell signal, no news, no way to get out, no way to get home, no way to get word to my family that I’m OK.”

McPeak has been carrying a stick with him to poke through the 18 inches of mud that has piled up in town since floodwaters retreated.