The mayor is urging Asheville residents to conserve water and prepare for a possible long-term water outage

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Mayor Esther Manheimer spoke to News 13 on Sunday, September 29th about the devastation left here in the mountains by Hurricane Helene.

She said this is a devastating and unprecedented storm situation and she is grateful for the help the community has given each other through it. She said she knows that water is the biggest issue that many people are wondering about and that it is the city's job to get the water supply going.

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The Mills River Generating Station in south Asheville is operating and some people have water service in south Asheville.

She has asked those who have water to continue filling bathtubs and ensuring they have water available in case of further outages.

For people in the northern part of the city and customers outside the city limits — those served by the North Fork plant — it's still a work in progress. Getting to the construction site was also difficult because the roads were washed out, she said.

Manheimer said they are using every resource to get the water service back on track and that incredible efforts have been made to restore that service.

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The problem, she said, is that they are seeing a loss of service to Asheville, so work is underway to restore that.

We don't want people to assume that this will happen quickly. We need to make sure people understand that they should plan for the long term. You need to have water available for drinking, flushing toilets, things like that – don't assume that's going to end any time soon,” she said.

She said while she hopes this isn't the case, they should expect full recovery to potentially take several weeks.

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The Woodfin Water District announced at 8 p.m. Sunday that it had sustained significant damage from the hurricane. Some customers may still have water service, but the district hopes to resume water production in the next few days as repairs are made.

The district says it is currently without power at many of its facilities and has limited ability to operate generators at the sites due to damage preventing refueling. According to the district, the Buncombe County Emergency Operations Center is working with state and federal officials to prepare drinking water stations for residents as quickly as possible.

The city has asked residents to sign up for it AVL warningswhich are the best way to stay up to date on restoration efforts. There are also city workers who go out into the community and distribute resource pages.

She said people should keep in mind that the city continues to have a curfew from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The city will attend the next district meeting, scheduled for Monday, September 30 at 10 a.m. .