A self-employed couple lost their home and livelihoods in Hurricane Helene. Their home insurance doesn’t come close to enabling them to rebuild their lives.

• A couple in North Carolina were caught in a landslide caused by heavy rain from Hurricane Helene.
• Their house and livelihoods were destroyed, and Lindsay Thomas left unable to walk.
• They are unsure how they will repay medical bills and get their lives back on track.

On the morning of Friday, September 27, Andrew Marsh and Lindsay Thomas were at their home — in a small community of houses scattered along a winding mountain road in Marion, North Carolina — drinking coffee with two neighbors and waiting for Hurricane Helene to pass.

They lived in the 500-mile stretch of the US that Helene would roll through, including parts of Florida, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. But the couple weren’t worried; they knew a storm was coming, but hadn’t been told to evacuate because their home was on high ground in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Still, they had prepared for flooding and had enough food, supplies, and a generator to survive for one or two weeks “if it got really bad,” Marsh, a 34-year-old metalworker, told Business Insider.

But they didn’t know that several days of heavy rain from Hurricane Helene had weakened the soil on the mountain, triggering a landslide that was headed straight down toward their home.

Marsh and Thomas were thrown down the mountain by a wave of sliding earth, rocks, and trees that onlookers estimated was 40 to 60 feet high, destroying their home and livelihoods in a matter of seconds.

The debris crushed Thomas, dislocating her legs and leaving her unable to walk. Marsh had “at least 50” flesh wounds and couldn’t use his right hand because it was sliced open down to the muscle, he said.

Helene is estimated to have caused up to $34 billion worth of damage

Since Helene made landfall, at least 215 people have been confirmed dead, making it the second deadliest hurricane in the US in recent years, after Katrina in 2005.

On Monday, Moodys estimated the hurricane caused between $20 billion and $34 billion worth of damage, with between $15 billion to $26 billion affecting properties alone.

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that only 4% of homeowners in the US have flood insurance, and those who do might not be covered for flooding or landslides, this looks to be an expensive disaster for many.

Marsh and Thomas, 40, a yoga teacher and masseuse, will be dealing with the aftermath long after Thomas is discharged from hospital. The couple told Business Insider they will have to rebuild their lives and careers from scratch, all while paying off medical bills, trying to claim home insurance, and dealing with the psychological fallout.

Stories like Marsh and Thomas’ are only going to become more common as the climate crisis brings more rain, and with it landslides to vulnerable areas, researchers concluded in a 2016 paper published in Earth-Science Reviews.

Natural disasters have already cost the US in a big way: between 1980 and 2021, the country spent $2 trillion on both immediate and longer-term restoration such as repairing infrastructure, a 2023 article published in The Journal of Climate Change and Health found.

‘Mud and water was being pressed into my nose, ears, and mouth’

Just before 10 a.m., the couple heard a “deep rumbling” and “loud cracking thunder-like noises” a few hundred yards from their home, Thomas said, before the ground dropped out from beneath their feet.

“It happened so fast that there was no chance of reacting. The best way I’ve been able to describe it is as if somebody just threw the house into a blender and hit the puree button,” Marsh said.

Thomas added: “I just fell down and down. I remember my vision going from light to brown to black, and mud and water was being pressed into my nose, ears, and mouth.

“I remember a very specific moment where I kind of surrendered and recognized ‘I am dying right now.’ So I decided to just soften to the experience and moved into more of a place of acceptance and acknowledging all of my blessings.

“I let go of my phone, and it felt really good to let go of the struggle.”

It was then that she was “miraculously spit out” of the sliding earth and found herself about an eighth of a mile from where their home had been, straddling a tree trunk and covered head to toe in mud.

It took hours for rescue workers to find the couple

Marsh managed to pull himself from the debris with some effort. He then helped Thomas, who had lost the use of her legs, down from the tree trunk, before digging their neighbor, John Norwood, out of neck-deep rubble. They didn’t know where Norwood’s fiancé, Julie le Roux, was, and he “wandered off” to try to find her, Marsh said. She was still missing as of October 3.

Marsh found an empty Airbnb property about 250 yards away and helped Thomas limp into it. There, they were able to do some basic first aid about three hours after the landslide.

Norwood showed up after two hours, “covered head to toe in wounds,” he said.

Then, at about 4 p.m., six hours after the landslide, they spotted a rescue worker across a 50-foot-wide flow of runoff. By midnight, the three were evacuated from the area by North Carolina State Fire Marshals and were treated for their injuries at nearby hospitals by what Thomas described as an “amazing” EMT care team.

Covering medical costs ‘somehow’

“We’re both still in a lot of pain. It’s near constant, but there’s definitely signs that we’re making a recovery and that we are going to be OK,” Marsh said.

As a veteran, Marsh has access to a medical benefits package, but Thomas is without active health insurance. They will have to cover her medical costs “somehow,” Marsh said. But since he lost his workshop, van, and equipment in the disaster, and Thomas’ job depends on the “strength and mobility” of her body, it’s unclear how.

The couple had home insurance, but their insurer has refused to cover the loss of their home because it was destroyed by a landslide, not a flood. But “even with the homeowners insurance policy, if it was to completely pay out, it wouldn’t come close to being able to replace our lives,” Marsh said.

For now, Thomas is trying to remain in the present and not worry too much about the future, although it hasn’t fully hit her that they “don’t have a home to go back to,” she said.

Marsh’s brother set up a GoFundMe for the couple, to cover their medical expenses, temporary housing, and living costs as they get situated. Marsh said that although he struggles with the idea of accepting help, he knows they need as much as they can get right now.

“When this whole situation has passed, I’m going to dedicate some part of my life to returning the favor to the world,” he said.