ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Seventeen Greensboro Fire Department firefighters traveled to Asheville and Buncombe County over the weekend on mutual-aid standby for Hurricane Isaias, ready for western North Carolina emergencies that ultimately did not require a major rescue response.
Assistant Chief Bryan Vickery said the team role was to respond across the western branch of North Carolina if an emergency developed, including worst-case scenarios such as landslides, structural collapses and loss of life. Mountain rescues differ from coastal flat-water flooding, he said, because crews face rapid water and landslide risk in the higher terrain.
The Greensboro unit did not have to respond to any major emergencies during the weekend deployment, which Vickery called a relief when impacts fall short of the worst forecasts. Residents who saw the team at a gas station thanked them for being ready even without a large call volume.
Asheville sits in Western North Carolina / Blue Ridge Mountains, and Hurricane Helene catastrophic flooding on September 27, 2024 remains the dominant civic and economic story shaping Asheville and Buncombe County recovery efforts into 2026. That recovery backdrop is why outside fire crews still stage here when Atlantic storms threaten the mountains, even when the worst case does not arrive.
Mutual-aid visits also give visiting crews mountain experience they can take home, while giving Buncombe County an extra trained bench during storm weekends. For residents still rebuilding from prior mountain floods, seeing outside firefighters staged and ready is part of how the region manages each new Atlantic storm track.
