BURNSVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Search and rescue efforts continue across Western North Carolina, including in Yancey County, where cell service is virtually non-existent.

“However bad you can imagine it, that’s how bad it is,” Burnsville resident Michael Stokes said. “The flooding, the damage is like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Outside of Burnsville, communities are shattered. From the air, each frame is more jarring than the next.

Effectively, we’re cut off,” Stokes said. “Pensacola Road doesn’t exist anymore... We’ve seen houses just float by and it’s just devastating to watch.

Stokes lives in the neighborhood of Pensacola, and the Cattail Creek Community is nearby.

“There are no more roads," Michael Store said.

It took Store eight hours and multiple UTV rides to get to Burnsville – a trip that normally takes 30 minutes.

The roads were are completely washed out, so it’s going up through creeks and mountain sides,” he said. “We’ve seen houses just float by and it’s just devastating to watch. This is going to be years. It is so catastrophic.

With no cell service, Burnsville's town square is becoming a traditional gathering spot.

“It’s been the only way we’ve known that some people that we were looking for are okay,” Burnsville resident Shelly Camper said.

Camper is one of many who left a message on a white board. For some, it has been the only way to check in with people.

“We had people by Cane River Park that we had no idea if they made it, and through being able to write messages on paper, even before the boards came up, we were able to find out that they were okay,” Camper said.

There are notes being written and information passed around.

There’s no electricity, we have no internet, but it looks normal here and it’s hard to think that a mile that way and a mile that way, it’s all gone, but at least we have this," Stokes said. “It’s really cool that the people that we know and didn’t know, look everyone’s really come together and done a really good job of supporting each other because that’s all we got.

WLOS spoke with Sheriff Shane Hilliard and a representative from State Emergency Command, who say they plan to provide an update on Tuesday, Oct. 1.

We can rebuild from here,” Stokes said.