Kentucky State Police dispatch assists in Asheville, North Carolina

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – North Carolina called and Kentucky answered as areas still recover from Helene. The Kentucky State Police is helping out where it can.

News 40 spoke to Dewey Burchfield and Brandon Adams, telecommunicators for KSP who are part of a six man team working with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office to facilitate recovery efforts.

Burchfield is a public safety telecommunicator manager, who said his team is manning ops channel for sheriff’s EOC or emergency operations center, working with out of county law enforcement and sending on strike calls 24/7.

Both Burchfield and Adams said it’s a chaotic scene right now in Asheville, just around two weeks after Hurricane Helene dropped a staggering amount of rainfall into the Smokey Mountains. Adams said the scene is similar to yet far worse than the flooding of Eastern Kentucky in the summer of 2022, with Asheville being in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the state, mudslides and flooding have ravaged the city.

KSP dispatchers told us that the structural damage is mindboggling with areas completely covered in 20 to 30 feet of mud, making the area appear as if nothing had ever been there and infrastructure completely erased in some cases.

Burchfield said within the city, it would take at least three months to restore water.