Moment mudslide tears through home in North Carolina
Before the power cut out in Boone - a small town in North Carolina - some residents initially joked about living by candlelight.
“We all thought, oh, it might be fun,” says Rachel Wilkes.
But as she stood on the patio to film streams of water running down the slope by her parents' home on Friday, she realised that “half the hillside was coming towards me”.
The house was destroyed in the wave of mud that rushed past her porch.
Wilkes’ husband, still inside as she filmed, saw the mud splash the windows and thought she had gone down with it.
“I came very, very close to death,” Ms Wilkes suggests. Neither she nor her parents were injured in the crush, something she calls a “miracle”.
More than 160 people have died nationwide in Hurricane Helene, according to the BBC's US partner CBS, and hundreds more are missing.
