Inside the North Carolina mountain town that Hurricane Helene nearly wiped off the map

CHIMNEY ROCK VILLAGE, N.C. (AP) — The stone tower that gave this place its name was nearly a half billion years in the making — heated and thrust upward from deep in the Earth, then carved and eroded by wind and water.

But in just a few minutes, nature undid most of what it has taken humans a century and a quarter to build in the North Carolina mountain town of Chimney Rock.

"It feels like I was deployed, like, overnight and woke up in ... a combat zone," Iraq War veteran Chris Canada said as a massive twin-propped Chinook helicopter passed over his adopted hometown. "I don't think it's sunk in yet."