Nicole Rojas, 25, recently moved from near Tennessee, where she had been living “off the grid,” as she puts it, to a remote home on the mountain in Villas, North Carolina.
While searching for supplies in Boone, she told the BBC: “I wish I had stuck to my lifestyle a little bit because I was always drinking water, showering and eating food.”
Now she and her roommates, which include a 54-year-old woman, Karen’s 74-year-old mother and a family with young children, will likely be without power for weeks, she has been told. Off a tree-lined one-lane road.
“The only reason I was able to get out was because the gentlemen in the community were getting out their chainsaws and tractors and moving all the trees,” she said.
Mr. Rojas was home Friday when the storm hit the mountains. On Sunday, after the neighbors had been clearing the streets all Saturday, she and Karen went on an adventure into town. In the chaos of the storm, Karen, who suffered a life-threatening allergy attack after being stung by an insect, brought the supplies home.
Meanwhile, Rojas was able to stay in Boone with friends and go to work at a local health center. She plans to return home with more supplies on Wednesday.
It was at work when it finally hit her, after hearing another customer’s story.
“She was driving by with a truck full of bodies and she started crying,” she recalled. “And that’s when I broke down.”
“You hear everyone’s horror stories about how their whole house literally slid down the mountain.”
“I feel like I survived the apocalypse.”
