The one I am going to make people mad.
No, it was not a hurricane.
Regarding the destructive path of Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas and East Tennessee: that was not a hurricane.
I am not dismissing the horrific results of the floods; they were horrific and still not fully accounted. But the traditional inland South has no idea the amount of apocalyptic destruction a hurricane would do to towns and cities. I have seen how houses and buildings are constructed up here, and I can predict that if a Cat 1 hurricane would hit Davidson County, half the edifices would be gone. A weak Category 3 would erase Nashville and surrounding areas and leave a sea of matchstick-looking debris. Probably nothing vertical would remain standing.
I have seen local meteorologists freaking out when the announce the possibility of 60 or 70 mph gusts of wind and totally losing their minds about a tornado exerting destruction for a few minutes in a 2-mile-wide path.
Now imagine sustained winds of over 100 miles per hours gnashing down and traveling at 8 to 10 miles per hour over where you live. It is like trying to compare tripping and scraping a knee against taking an angle grinder and remove your kneecap with an abrasive disc.
Good news? The likelihood of actually getting a hurricane this far north is actually zero. Storms and rains from the outer bands and leftovers of a hurricane? tragically yes and will happen again.
Be prepared for that and pray it does not happen to you and yours.
What you wrote should not make people mad.
It is pointing out a reality. (Granted, sometimes getting struck in the face with reality makes people mad.) But, you are correct. The building codes in western NC are not designed for hurricane level winds. Nor do they take into account a once in a century flooding. Why should they?
It is like expecting roof standards in Florida or SoCal to be deigned to support an Alaska level snow load. Or requiring tornado level structural ties on a cottage in New England.
What is important to fight back against is the idiocy thinking this destruction is some kind of proof of climate change. It is proof that different regions have different building requirements. Nothing more.
Hurricanes (and tornadoes) do come far north, tough rarely. The key point here isn't how far north, but how far inland you are. Hurricanes fall apart over land, but over water they weaken according to the water temperature. So New England gets an occasional one, if it comes in over the Atlantic and hits the coast just right. As I recall that happened in 1938 (before hurricanes got names).