Stunning Video Shows North Carolina Lake Packed With Ruins Of Nearby Village After Storm

Stunning video and images out of western North Carolina show a popular mountain lake eerily packed with the ruins of a nearby village after powerful wind and floodwaters brought by Hurricane Helena ripped through the area late last week.

One video taken Sunday by a Charlotte, North Carolina, city councilman shows the usually picturesque Lake Lure coated with splintered wood, trees, fragmented docks, boats and other various items.

Councilman Tariq Scott Bokhari, who said he shot the video during a day trip to the area to assist friends and determine how outsiders can help, described the scene as “post-apocalyptic” on social media.

“What I saw was really hard to describe, almost incomprehensible when you think about the magnitude of the impacts,” he told HuffPost by phone Monday. “In that video that I posted, (it’s) just a sea of things. You really have to focus your eyes on individual items to get a sense of just how big and significant of an event it is.”

Debris from surrounding homes and the nearby village of Chimney Rock rushed into the lake after more than a foot of rain deluged the area, approximately 30 miles southeast of Asheville, which suffered similar devastation.

“It was essentially just a moving blender that was just tearing through everything in its path,” Bokhari said of the swell of debris that consisted of metal and concrete.

“How do you even start the recovery process? We’re still in crisis management, locating missing people, but the magnitude of rebuilding and cleaning up after this, it’s not anything that a normal human can comprehend,” he said.

President Joe Biden said Monday he plans to travel to North Carolina later this week after hearing reports of more than 100 dead and up to 600 others