Dec 9, 2024 · By now, this story of locals living in flimsy tents post-Helene has taken on a life of its own. Especially once the frigid temperatures hit last week, the idea of people living in tents in Swannanoa and Fairview, among the hardest hit areas in Buncombe County, really fueled some outrage, both online and among some […]

Passenger jet, small plane nearly collided mid-air at Asheville airport last fall, federal report says. A passenger jet on its initial approach to the Asheville Regional Airport in October came within seconds of colliding midair with a private plane in a harrowing incident described by the jet’s captain in federal data obtained by Asheville Watchdog.

Dec 30, 2024 · “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” – Joseph Goebbels, January 12, 1941 If I were to write a headline over a story summarizing the essence of the 2024 elections, it would be this: the year of the new Big Lie. You’d think by […]

Oct 22, 2024 · The floodwaters rose so fast at Thanh Bui’s house the morning of Sept. 27, she had to swim to safety. Bui, 55, and her 30-year-old son, Quintin Ho, had been up much of the night, monitoring the howling winds and rainfall of Tropical Storm Helene. Ho periodically checked the yard of their home on Asheville […]

Dec 30, 2024 · Editor’s Note: As 2024 comes to a close, Asheville Watchdog staffers take you back and inside their most memorable stories and news events of the year. Helene will go down in history not just for the immense damage it caused but also the lives lost – 43 in Buncombe County alone. That statistic will forever […]

Dec 16, 2024 · A Mission Hospital pharmacist who supervised a team that tracked medication histories and prevented errors is suing the hospital, its corporate owner, and her boss after she was fired for posting a comment on social media criticizing what she described as inadequate staffing in her department. The lawsuit, filed in Buncombe County Superior Court on […]

Jan 7, 2025 · Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies, and the real answers: Question: The Asheville Regional Airport Authority has announced the destruction of several general aviation hangars on the south ramp to allegedly make room for commercial planes. No new hangars seem to be mentioned. Does good planning require building replacements before destroying the old? Is […]

Jan 16, 2025 · The ballots cast by 1,576 Buncombe County voters in the Nov. 5 election could be nullified if Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin succeeds in challenging his razor-thin loss to incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat. The Buncombe County ballots make up a small fraction of the 60,000 ballots cast by voters across […]

Nov 9, 2024 · Local homeowners who lost their homes or sustained serious damage in Helene’s floodwaters can begin applying next week to a federal program that may buy the home outright, or pay to have it elevated or rebuilt at a higher level. Steve McGugan, the state of North Carolina’s Hazard Mitigations section chief, explained at the Buncombe […]

Jan 6, 2025 · In the last two weeks of 2024, Asheville lost three community titans: businessman, local columnist and cowboy-hat wearing amateur historian Jerry Sternberg; funeral home owner and business pioneer Julia Ray, and Leslie Anderson, who played a key role in the revitalization of downtown Asheville.