ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Mayor Esther Manheimer spoke to News 13 on Sunday, September 29th about the devastation left here in the mountains by Hurricane Helene.

She said this is a devastating and unprecedented storm situation and she is grateful for the help the community has given each other through it. She said she knows that water is the biggest issue that many people are wondering about and that it is the city’s job to get the water supply going.

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The Mills River Generating Station in south Asheville is operating and some people have water service in south Asheville.

She has asked those who have water to continue filling bathtubs and ensuring they have water available in case of further outages.

For people in the northern part of the city and customers outside the city limits — those served by the North Fork plant — it’s still a work in progress. Getting to the construction site was also difficult because the roads were washed out, she said.

Manheimer said they are using every resource to get the water service back on track and that incredible efforts have been made to restore that service.

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The problem, she said, is that they are seeing a loss of service to Asheville, so work is underway to restore that.

We don’t want people to assume that this will happen quickly. We need to make sure people understand that they should plan for the long term. You need to have water available for drinking, flushing toilets, things like that – don’t assume that’s going to end any time soon,” she said.

She said while she hopes this isn’t the case, they should expect full recovery to potentially take several weeks.

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The city has asked residents to sign up for it AVL warningswhich are the best way to stay up to date on restoration efforts. There are also city workers who go out into the community and distribute resource pages.

She said people should keep in mind that the city continues to have a curfew from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The city will attend the next district meeting, scheduled for Monday, September 30 at 10 a.m. .