Written by Sally Kestin, Asheville Watchdog.
The state health agency finally released a list of storm-related fatalities this week, more than three months after Tropical Storm Helene, but it includes a woman who died of breast cancer and other inconsistencies that initially conflicted with the agency’s own records.
Following questions from Asheville Watchdog, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services revised the statewide storm death toll and reduced Buncombe’s tally from 43 to 42.
For months, the DHHS denied public records requests from The Watchdog and other media outlets for information about the deceased. Death certificates, autopsy reports and related documents are public records in North Carolina, but agency spokesmen said they were waiting until the death investigations were complete.
On Jan. 6, 2025, the DHHS sent a list to the media. But it contained names only – no ages, circumstances or causes of death, or even a county where each person lived or died.
And the numbers did not initially match up with the agency’s own web page for storm-related fatalities, a source DHHS has consistently cited as the official record-keeper of Helene victims.
The list released contains 104 names, but the agency’s storm fatality web page has said for weeks that 103 people died statewide.
The web page also said 43 people died in Buncombe, but as The Watchdog documented in its series, The Lives We Lost, just 41 death certificates citing Helene as a cause have been filed in the county.
Those 41 people are on the state’s list, along with one other woman from Buncombe.
That woman died at a nursing home on Sept. 27, the day of the storm, but the cause of death was metastatic breast cancer with no mention of Helene, according to her death certificate. It describes the manner of death as “natural.” The Watchdog is not identifying the woman because her family could not be reached.
Following questions from The Watchdog, DHHS revised its storm fatality web page to reflect a total of 104 deaths and reduced Buncombe’s tally to 42.
The breast cancer death was storm-related, DHHS spokeswoman Kelly Haight Connor said in an email. “However, the certifier did not mention Hurricane Helene in the cause of death,” she wrote. “This has since been corrected” following a standard review.
And on Tuesday afternoon, the state sent out a new list of storm victims to include the county and date of death.
The Watchdog has provided the only full accounting of the deaths in Buncombe, which suffered the most fatalities of any county. Reporters identified the deceased by combing through more than 850 death certificates, opening each PDF one at a time, to find those attributed to the storm and tracking down relatives and friends.
Lives We Lost profiled each of the 41 people for whom death certificates have been filed in Buncombe. You can read the 10-part series here.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include changes to the state’s storm death toll following inquiries from The Watchdog.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email [email protected]. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.