On a recent Friday, Ari Cohen and three friends — all seniors at Asheville High School — gathered to play UNO inside his house, next to a pile of bottled water in his living room.
It had been weeks since they and thousands of other students had been inside a classroom because of devastation from Hurricane Helene, which left a massive tree leaning on Cohen's house. Without reliable cell or internet service, students in hard-hit Asheville have been finding other ways to pass the time — whether volunteering, exploring hurricane-damaged parts of town or playing board games.
