A Large Family Built Its Own Little Town. A Hurricane Killed 11 of Them.

For more than a century, the Craig family felt safe on their land in western North Carolina, where mountains covered in maple and hickory trees shielded them during storms.

Their surroundings were so serene that generations of Craigs stayed and settled on the outskirts of Fairview, N.C., near Asheville. Eventually, about 75 members of the extended family lived as neighbors, most in an area roughly the size of a Walmart parking lot.

They called it Craigtown.

But on the morning of Sept. 27, as Hurricane Helene loosened the region’s already saturated ground with more heavy rain, two landslides thundered down the mountains and straight into Craigtown. Within seconds, multiple homes were devoured by boulders and trees. Eleven members of the Craig family were killed, their bodies found days later beneath mud or near blueberry patches miles away.

“You can hardly stand to look at it, to see your neighborhood and your family wiped out,” Larry Craig, 75, said on a recent cold afternoon, looking at the new view from his front porch. Where there once were homes and gardens was now a wide furrow of dirt, as if a giant had swiped his foot across it.

At a time of year meant for family gatherings and holiday celebrations, the Craigs, nearly all deeply religious Baptists, are clasping their hands in prayer and asking: Can God help their shattered hearts and land?