Cell phone service is almost non-existent. Duke Energy’s power outage map shows probably about 75% of Asheville is in the dark. Might be a little less, but there are definitely a lot of people in the dark there.
And if a lot of trees are down, then that adds a lot of time to getting lights back. They have to clear the road and lines before they can rebuild and put the lights on.
TVA, energy provider in Tennessee and a little snippet of rural North Carolina (and my employer for a few more months), had been unable to get line crews into some of the areas in NC and northeast TN due to roads and bridges being out from the flooding. They are using helicopters to access some of their transmission lines. It’s pretty messy up there.
A good source for weather related things, and one to follow concerning the mess up in NE Tennessee and western NC is Ryan Hall, Y’all on X. @ryanhallyall is his twitter name.
She lives near the town of Mars Hill.