Hurricane Helene flood communication research

Abstract

Hurricane Helene produced catastrophic flooding across Western North Carolina (WNC) in September 2024, claiming more than 100 lives and directly affecting hundreds of thousands of residents. In the storm's aftermath, RTI staff living and working in the impacted region observed a disconnect between the urgent warning messages issued ahead of Helene and the risk perceptions later described by community members. In response, RTI funded a rapid post-event study to investigate how flood warnings were received, interpreted, and how they translated into action. Building on prior flood communication research conducted under the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), RTI partnered with Blue Ridge Resource Conservation and Development Council to conduct 36 semi-structured interviews and two community listening sessions across eight of the most impacted counties. Participants represented five audience segments: emergency responders, health and human service organizations, local authorities, community-based organizations, and the public. The study findings reveal that while warnings were widely issued and trusted, access was uneven, and the urgency of official messaging did not consistently translate into perceived personal risk. Prior storm experience, alert fatigue, geographic misconceptions, and a lack of localized context impacted the ways that individuals internalized risks. The report identifies implications for the forecasting enterprise, local communities, and broader resilience efforts. The authors provide recommendations for coordinated investment and collaboration across organizations to strengthen the full warning-to-action chain through improved risk interpretation, alert-fatigue mitigation, localized messaging, communication systems redundancy, and sustained public education and local capacity building.