ERWIN, Tenn. — April Boyd texted her husband before she boarded the helicopter.
“So, I don’t want to be dramatic,” she wrote on Sept. 27, “but we are gonna fly and rescue patients from the rooftop of Unicoi hospital.”
Earlier that day, Hurricane Helene roared into the Southern Appalachian Mountains after moving north through Florida and Georgia. The storm prompted a deadly flash flood that tore through Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, trapping dozens of people on the rooftop of the county hospital.
The fast-moving floodwaters had made earlier rescue attempts by ambulance and boat impossible. Trees, trailers, buildings, caskets and cars swept past the hospital in murky, brown rapids that overwhelmed the one-story structure with 12 feet of water on all sides.
No one knew how long the hospital’s frame would hold or if the rising water would breach the top of the 20-foot-tall building. Little more than a mile downstream, six people at a plastics plant in Erwin’s industrial park died in the flood.