Mayor Esther Manheimer spoke to News 13 on Sunday, Sept. 29 following the devastation that Hurricane Helene has left here in the mountains.

She said that this has been a devastating and unprecedented storm situation, and she is thankful for the help the community has provided for each other through this. She said she knows that water is the biggest issue many people are wondering about and that the City's job is to get the water service up and running.

The Mills River plant in south Asheville is functioning and some people do have water services in south Asheville.

She has asked those with water to continue to fill bathtubs and make sure they have water available in case of more outages.

For people in the northern part of the city and customers outside of city limits – those who are served by the North Fork plant – is still a work in progress. There are also challenges even getting to the site because roads have been washed out, she said.

Manheimer said they are using every resource to try to get the water back on and that there has been an incredible effort being made to restore this service.

The issue, she said, is that they are seeing a loss of the feeder pipes down into Asheville, so work is underway to try and restore that.

We don’t want people to assume that’s going to happen quickly. We need to make sure people understand that this is something they should plan for long term. They need to keep water for drinking, for flushing toilets, for things like that – Don't assume this is going to end anytime soon,” she said.

She said that while she hopes this is not the case, people should plan for this to possibly take several weeks for complete restoration.

The Woodfin Water District announced at 8 p.m. on Sunday that it sustained significant damages from the hurricane. Some customers may still have water services, but the District says it hopes to restart water production within the next few days as repairs are made.

The District says it currently has no power at many of its facilities, and there is a limited ability to run generators on the sites due to damages that prevent refueling efforts. The District says that the Buncombe County Emergency Operations Center is working with state and federal officials to prepare potable water stations as soon as possible for residents.

The city has asked that residents sign up for , which are the best way to stay up to date on restoration efforts. There are also city workers going out in the community handing out resource pages.

She said to remember that the city is also still on a curfew from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The city will be a part of the next county briefing, which is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 30.

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The website offers crowdsourced information about resources and other data about the Asheville area as it continues to recover from Helene.