The death toll from catastrophic flooding in the Asheville area of ​​western North Carolina more than tripled to 35 on Monday as survivors in remote mountain towns described seeing victims’ bodies stuck in trees.

There have been 120 deaths nationwide from Hurricane Helene, which has cut a path of death and destruction through the Southeast since making landfall last Thursday.

The rains devastated the mountains of Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, and washed away entire communities in floods and mudslides. Roads were buried or washed away, meaning that the victims could no longer be reached by rescue workers.

“There were bodies in trees. They found bodies under rubble,” said Alyssa Hudson, whose home of Black Mountain — a village of 8,400 people about 12 miles from Asheville — was all but washed away.

Hudson’s neighborhood was evacuated, but she saw videos posted by strangers on social media showing her home flooded up to the roof.

“We started seeing videos of our house on Facebook,” Hudson said. “Our floors have collapsed, our walls have disappeared. We had a shed in our back yard that they found two miles away.”

Hudson and her boyfriend managed to escape the worst of the flooding, but their friends and neighbors trapped in the city reported harrowing stories of bodies floating in ditches and residents fighting for their lives against the rising tide.

Hudson’s boss, Corbin Weeks, with whom she coaches softball at a local college, helped bring a family home from a trailer just before it disappeared into a river of brown mud.

“It’s like hell on earth that we just can’t wake up from,” Weeks said.

Kimberly and Jimmie Stone were separated from their daughter at the local Montreat College, where around 1,000 students were stranded without power and little cell service.

As the couple attempted to drive from Asheville to Black Mountain, they witnessed a scene of almost indescribable devastation.

“There were downed trees, downed power lines, collapsed buildings, overturned cars and destroyed train tracks all along the road. “Buildings collapsed on the street,” Kimberly Scott said.

The Scots eventually managed to rescue their daughter, but other students were stuck on campus for days, subsisting on cafeteria food cooked on gas-powered ovens.

A preliminary estimate puts the total damage from Hurricane Helene at $34 billion, Fox Business reported.

As for Hudson and her boyfriend, their rental insurance doesn’t cover natural disasters, and they’ll be left on the other side of the disaster with next to nothing. “Almost literally everything we own is gone. …My friend lost all the equipment for his company. Our furniture, electronics, family photos and records, birth certificates – completely gone.”