Through the windows of the Market Place Restaurant in downtown Asheville, N.C., chef and owner William Dissen has only a partial view of the disaster left in Hurricane Helene’s wake.

There’s debris everywhere, Dissen said Monday, evidence of the “biblical flooding” that overtook Western North Carolina this weekend. The restaurant on Asheville’s historic Wall Street is without water, but miraculously has power and WiFi, two luxuries allowing him to piece together what happened.

“The river has wiped out everything,” he said. “We still haven’t heard from all of our staff.”

What he has heard isn’t good: friends and family with destroyed homes and missing loved ones. Whole towns washed away. Reports of theft drove Dissen to hunker down in his restaurant — a semifinalist of the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Restaurant in America award this year — to protect it from potential looting.

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As of Monday afternoon, Dissen had not seen help from FEMA or the National Guard. Instead, it felt like “no one’s in charge … it’s very scary,” he said.

In the coming days, weeks and months, residents like Dissen will rely on government relief efforts — and the generosity of strangers — to rebuild a foliage-draped mountain town known for its eclectic arts, music, beer and restaurant scenes.

Here’s what Good Samaritans can do to help Asheville in the early days of the relief effort — and what visitors need to know about their upcoming plans.