Asheville Police Department shares recent, detailed look into Helene search and rescue

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — When Helene first came through Asheville, it was places like the Veteran's Restoration Quarters that had to be evacuated. In the weeks that followed, the focus turned to search and rescue.

That made for a hectic stretch for all first response units, including the Asheville Police Department.

“Exit 55 is right here,” APD Captain Joe Silberman pointed out. “This was a big area of concern. This was a major area of concern. We did do recoveries in that area.”

Silberman is referring to East Asheville.

“It was about 6:15 in the morning when [Asheville Police] rolled through saying it was time to get ready to evacuate,” Army veteran Jason Cimbolo said. “'It’s time to go. This is serious.' They said 'if you guys don’t go, there’s a chance you will lose your life.' When they loaded us all on the last two trucks and took us over the bridge, the water was coming over the top of the bridge.

“When I finally got to the front and saw the police with the National Guard, that’s when I knew this was serious,” Marine Corps veteran Edward Lynch told News 13.

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APD led the charge on evacuating Jason, Edward and many others. In the weeks that followed, more missing persons reports came in.

“I think we ended up at about 410 different address locations that we had to go to,” Silberman said. “We came close to around 1,000 individuals that we were deeply concerned about. There was seven people who were in dire circumstances.”

Among those, nine are dead and nine are still being searched for. On top of that, 354 vehicles were located in floodplains.

However, to go from 1,000 to nine missing took some serious help.

There’s not a doubt in my mind that were the FBI not here, we wouldn’t have been able to find a good deal of those 400 people,” Silberman said. “At one point, the National Guard sent a gargantuan amount of people for one last push of targeted searches for high-concern areas. That allowed us to be as successful as we were in this.

Outside units from California, Mississippi and New Jersey have also assisted since the beginning.

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Asheville Fire Department headed broad search and rescue missions, while APD's searches were targeted.

“We did our own targeted approaches,” Silberman explained. “If the person was last seen here, we’re worried about they went here, so let’s start looking here. Our cell phones were down, we didn’t have Starlinks yet, and there were a bunch of unique challenges. We eventually started using the radio a lot more than we normally did.”

Now, officers are as active as they were in week one.

I’ve seen a daily presence from them every single day. They’ve been doing their job the best they can,” Cimbolo said. “We’ll be sitting here late at night, and we’ll hear one of their cars go screaming into the night. They’re going to save somebody else.

“We don’t have a guide for this,” Silberman said. “We don’t have any prior experiences we can really draw from. It’s going to take as long as it takes. I don’t think any of us here have ever felt so well supported and taken care of by the community we serve.”