People desperate for answers as family members remain unaccounted for days after Helene’s devastation

By Ashley R. Williams, Dalia Faheid, Sharif Paget, Michelle Krupa, David Williams, Taylor Galgano and Zenebou Sylla, CNN

(CNN) — A father floated away in his Jeep as water surrounded his home; a teacher held onto a mattress-turned-raft as her home drifted down the river; and a man was trapped on his apartment building’s balcony, calling for help.

They are among the hundreds of people authorities say are still unaccounted for across the Southeast in Helene’s wake.

Helene’s path of devastation across the Southeast has made it the deadliest hurricane to strike the United States mainland in nearly 20 years, with the number of those killed across six states growing to at least 213 by Friday.

Relatives of those still unaccounted for are hoping above all their loved ones aren’t added to the mounting death toll.

The search for missing people continues Friday as crews work to navigate washed-out roads, destroyed bridges, bloated rivers and flooded towns to reach those in need of help, their efforts hindered in part by ongoing cellular service issues.

It’s not clear how many people are missing. FEMA was still working with state and local officials to confirm the total in the aftermath of Helene, Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, concerned family members and friends continue looking for those lost.

“How do we get help finding missing family in the area, my brother is missing,” someone wrote on a recent Facebook post from North Carolina’s Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office. Similar posts by worried relatives have saturated social media over the past several days.

More than 200 people in the county were unaccounted for as of Thursday night, and the county’s death toll stood at 72, according to Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller. North Carolina has racked up the highest death toll thus far, with 106 fatalities reported.

As of Friday, there are 75 active missing person cases in Asheville, located in Buncombe County, according to Sean Aardema, the city’s deputy chief of police.

Below are some of the people who remain missing after Helene, according to their family members:

Steven Cloyd

Matthew Cloyd describes his father, Steven Cloyd, as a jokester who likes to make people smile. He’s a tough guy, but he’s “got one of the biggest hearts,” Matthew Cloyd said on CNN News Central Thursday. “He’d give you the last $5 in his pocket.”

His father went missing in Tennessee after Helene’s wrath lashed the home of Steven and Keli Cloyd, who have been married for 36 years and live in the Appalachians, about 1,700 feet above sea level.

Last Friday, as heavy rain from Helene drenched the Cloyds’ community, Keli headed to her job as a beauty supply store’s manager 20 miles east of her home.

Steven Cloyd kept his wife, with whom he’d celebrated an anniversary a week prior, updated on the rain coming down at home. The updates he sent via texts and videos soon escalated from a growing puddle he observed nearby, to saturated pavement outside and an almost completely water-filled basement.

His texts showed he told his wife he and their dog, Orion, had waded to the Jeep in knee-high water. He discouraged his wife from coming home. “About to go,” Steven Cloyd texted. Keli Cloyd responded, “Jeep moving?” to which her husband texted back, “Yes.”

And then … “About out of power,” he wrote. In the next horrifying update, he texted his wife, “Starting to float away.”

Keli Cloyd called her son Matthew in Rockford, Illinois, to warn him his dad was in trouble. The 35-year-old and his younger brother then drove around 700 miles south to search for their father.

Steven Cloyd’s Jeep was later found a quarter mile southwest of their house, but he was not.

Kim Ashby

Kim Ashby, a North Carolina teacher of 20 years, is described as “the glue that holds everyone together,” her daughter, Jessica Meidinger, told CNN.

Her absence since going missing after floodwaters from Helene washed away her and her husband’s home with them both inside has ripped their family apart.

Kim and Rod Ashby have been building a house in Elk Park, North Carolina, near the Tennessee state line, for about two years and have visited regularly to apply the finishing touches, according to Meidinger.

The couple live in Sanford, about 45 miles southwest of Raleigh, but went to the house on Thursday to handle a few things before the storm.

Rod Ashby had taken special care with the home he’d built “with his own two hands,” making efforts to reduce the flood risk from the nearby Elk River, Meidinger said.

“When he was building the house he marked the trees where the typical flooding gets to, and also to the highest historical level of flooding, and then he built the house above that,” Meidinger said. “So it was like 20 feet above the ground.”

It was barely raining when the couple arrived that night. They felt safe.

Jessica’s wife, Lauren Meidinger, said her in-laws were eating breakfast on Friday morning when Rod realized something was wrong.

“He heard a crack. He went outside again and saw that the footer of the home was gone,” Lauren said. “He ran in and told Kim, ‘Hey, we need to get dressed. We need to evacuate.’”

Their house was swept away into the river within seconds. A neighbor took a picture of it floating downstream.

Jessica Meidinger said her stepdad grabbed her mom and their three dogs and held onto a mattress as their home floated down the river. The house slammed into the bank at a bend in the river and blew apart, she said.

Rod Ashby was able to grab Kim Ashby and the dogs. They clung to a section of wall until it broke apart.

“The last time anyone has seen my mom,” Jessica Meidinger said.

Rod Ashby was able to grab on to a tree and pull himself out of the water. He went up and down the bank yelling for his wife, finally crawling to a neighbor’s house for help.

Jessica and Lauren Meidinger were able to get Rod Ashby to their house on Tuesday night. They say he was taken to the hospital on Wednesday to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

“Obviously, emotionally, he’s not in a great place. He wants to find Kim,” Lauren Meidinger said. “So overall, he just needs to be around family, but he wants to get back up there and keep looking.”

They said search teams are out looking for her, and they’ve been overwhelmed with offers of help.

“She’s a fighter. You know, Kim fought breast cancer and beat it, and she’s fought her entire life,” Lauren Meidinger said.

Rosa Andrade

The last time Carina Alonso heard from her 29-year-old cousin, Rosa Andrade, they were speaking on the phone as the floodwater levels rose. That was a little less than a week ago, when the mother of two had been trapped in floodwater after going to work at a plastics facility in Erwin, Tennessee – and no one has seen or heard from her since.

In an interview with CNN affiliate WVLT, Alonso described Andrade as a loving person.

In their last moments on the phone last Friday, Alonso described the moment panic set in for Andrade as water flooded the streets.

“That’s when she just lost it,” Alonso said. “She knew she wasn’t going to be able to get out, especially since she doesn’t know how to swim.”

By the time Andrade left the facility, “it was already too late because the cars were moving away with the water,” Alonso told WVLT.

The flooding swept away 11 of the plastics facility’s employees, leaving two of them confirmed dead and four still missing, The Associated Press reported.

The county’s emergency management officials said they were able to rescue four people from the company, but their resources were stretched across several rescues, CNN affiliate WCYB reported.

“Our great emergency services here in the county, they were maxed,” Unicoi County Emergency Management Director Jimmy Erwin said. “They used everything they had to save life that day. Some were saved. We are still searching for some. We still have hopes we’ll find more alive.”

Omar Khan

Omar Khan’s location remains a mystery to his family almost a week after Helene flooded Asheville, North Carolina, where video showed the 44-year-old man’s home being carried away by floodwater.

His neighbor, who prefers to go by her initials, K.M, for her own privacy, told CNN she is filled with guilt she couldn’t save him.

“His face does not leave my head,” said K.M.

Khan was trapped on his apartment building’s balcony on September 27 with two other neighbors screaming for help, according to K.M.

“I hate that I couldn’t really get to him. We all tried from this end,” she said. The water moved too quickly.

She and her family made several attempts to call the police but struggled with cell service. They tried to reassure Khan help was coming.

But at around noon, she watched as Khan’s small apartment building shifted off its stilts and floated down the road from the heavy flooding.

“Once the building shifted and moved, all we heard was a scream and that was it,” K.M said. “I just want everybody to know we tried to help. We tried.”

The last time Zubila Shafiq, his wife from whom he’s separated, heard from Khan was a text last Friday morning. She told CNN her husband, who lives in a separate home, texted from a neighbor’s phone saying, “I love you and the boys. Please tell them that. I hope you guys are okay.”

The parents share 7- and 9-year-old sons.

Since then, Shafiq has been looking everywhere for Khan.

“I drove everywhere all over town. I went to every single evacuation site. I kept asking, ‘where else, where else, where else can I go?’” she told CNN through tears.

Neighbors told Shafiq people in the apartment complex evacuated at 5 a.m. last Friday when sirens went off. But on Sunday, K.M told her Khan did not evacuate before the storm and was trapped on his balcony.

Shafiq soon discovered Khan’s apartment building was destroyed, and K.M and her family told her they couldn’t “see a way he could’ve survived.”

But she hasn’t stopped searching.

“I just told (the children) we’re looking. We’re going to keep looking. We’re just going to keep looking for daddy,” Shafiq cried.

Julie Le Roux

As Hurricane Helene swept through McDowell County in western North Carolina, John Norwood and his fiancé Julie Le Roux had sought refuge at a neighbor’s home.

But there proved to be no escape from the monstrous storm: a mudslide demolished the neighbor’s house, sweeping them both into the river, Norwood’s family told CNN affiliate WRAL.

Rescue crews used a pulley to pull Norwood to safety over the treacherous waters as they battled against the current. But Le Roux was nowhere to be found, WRAL reported.

Le Roux is among 21 unaccounted for residents in the county search and rescue crews are scrambling to locate. As of Thursday morning, 309 individuals who had been reported missing were safely accounted for, according to McDowell County emergency management officials.

“We continue to prioritize search and rescue efforts and are working around the clock to search for missing persons. Our primary search efforts focused on locating individuals who were easily contactable and visibly in need of assistance,” officials said in a Facebook post Thursday. “Now, our teams are conducting secondary searches, utilizing specialized resources such as search dogs and drones to thoroughly check areas that were previously cleared, ensuring that any missing or hard-to-reach individuals are located.”

As the search for Le Roux continues and the family hopes for her safe return, Norwood is at the hospital recovering from injuries that led to an infection, his uncle Robert Martin told CNN affiliate WRAL.

“We won’t stop until we account for all our citizens and visitors and ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met,” county emergency services director Will Kehler said. “Every single day we are moving the needle, protecting and saving lives. The spirit of this community is one of determination and resilience, and we will not fail.”

Lyn McFarland

Lyn McFarland’s sister-in-law said her family last heard from him the night of September 26, just before Helene’s arrival. McFarland, 68, went missing after his neighbors last saw him drift away on his roof last Friday in Asheville, North Carolina.

“His brother spoke with him Thursday night … before all of the bad weather really got going,” Jennifer Hepler, 56, told CNN on Thursday.

The lower part of McFarland’s home, which Hepler says was built to handle flooding, had been affected by floodwaters before.

“He has doors that he can open on either side of his garage, and it just lets the water flow right through,” Hepler said, adding that McFarland had told his brother that he planned to open those doors during the storm.

But McFarland was last seen by neighbors drifting away on his home’s roof with his dog Poco on September 27 as Helene swept through the Swannanoa River, about 100 feet from where he lived.

A neighbor, Tony Dilaurentis, described the last few moments he may have seen McFarland in an interview with CNN affiliate WLOS on Wednesday.

“He was on top of his house,” Dilaurentis said. “And the last I saw, I ran down the hill, his house was gone, and I heard people yelling from the porch out there, and I just saw a man on a roof. I thought it was Lyn.”

Hepler and her family heard from a neighbor about McFarland last Saturday morning. Neither he nor his dog have been found as of Friday, she said.

“It’s just heartbreaking, just waiting,” said Hepler, who is from Collierville, Tennessee. “Yet, there’s nothing we can do from 400 miles away other than monitor the situation, monitor Facebook, monitor email, and, you know, wait for calls from the missing persons lists that we’ve put him on.”

As searches and rescues continue, Hepler said she and her family hope McFarland just hasn’t been able to contact them.

“That’s kind of what we’re hoping for, is just that he’s somewhere and just can’t get in touch right now, and that we can track him down,” Hepler said. “We’re just continuing to keep hope alive and hope for the best outcome.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the state where Steven Cloyd went missing. It was Tennessee.

CNN’s Andy Rose, Steve Almasy, Melissa Alonso, Emma Tucker and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.

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