They're piled on river banks, lodged in uprooted trees, embedded in sediment and jammed under logs. Many are tangled in mounds of debris up to two stories high.
Two years after Hurricane Helene leveled forests, bulldozed houses and filled western North Carolina rivers with everything from cars to refrigerators, the work of cleaning up the debris goes on. And along the iconic French Broad River, known for its whitewater rapids, one item stands out among the rest: massive numbers of PVC pipes that washed away from a factory north of Asheville.
