Iconic Biltmore Estate that's home to largest private house in US is badly-damaged by Helene

The 129-year-old iconic Biltmore Estate in North Carolina is a waterlogged disaster zone after Hurricane Helene.

The 8,000-acre estate in Asheville remains America's largest home, serving the public as a historic house museum and tourist attraction built by George Vanderbilt in 1895. The famed mansion has been featured in at least 15 movies, including Patch Adams, Forrest Gump, Hannibal and Richie Rich.

Today, its faithful caretakers are working to clean up debris from Helene's wrath. The once daffodil-lined entry road is awash with mud. The Biltmore Village, where visitors could walk around and admire the historic buildings, is full of toppled statues.

The flooding also killed several animals on the property and left buildings in low-lying areas in ruins. On Thursday, Biltmore shared an update to Facebook on how the property, grounds and the animals fared in the Category 4 tropical storm after receiving concerns from the public.

'The entrance to Biltmore, located in Biltmore Village, and other low-lying areas of the property, such as our farm, experienced significant flooding and damage to buildings,' the post said. 'We sadly lost a few of our animals during the storm, but the vast majority are safe and accounted for thanks to our dedicated agriculture and equestrian teams.'

Luckily, some areas of the estate spared significant damage, including the Biltmore House, Conservatory, winery, gardens and the hotels - all of which were all mostly unaffected by Helene.

But the Biltmore Village, just three miles north of the mansion, faced a much different fate. Business owners returned to the village on Monday to assess the extensive damage to their properties after the substantial flooding took over. The historic village, originally constructed for employees of the Biltmore Estate in the 1800s, faced widespread catastrophe after more than 14 inches of rain from Helene poured over Asheville.

Residents said the water rose as high as 15 feet in some areas of the village, WRAL reported. The flood water came largely from the Swannanoa River, which has since receded leaving the haunting sight of what remains under the water. Business owners covered their buildings in plastic and laid out sandbags to curb the flooding in a desperate attempt to prepare for the hurricane. But Helene proved to be too strong. The flooding covered signs and windows, and even reached above the hoods of cars and trucks. It left businesses ravaged and in the muck.

'You know, I'm in a little bit of shock, maybe like most people,' Randall Gary, a resident of Asheville for five decades, told WRAL. Gary has worked at the New Morning Gallery in the village for 25 years and made little progress while trying to dig his shop out of the mud on Monday. 'I don't even know what to say,' he added. 'It's bad.'

The ruined community is only one of the devastating effects of Helene. Residents told WRAL News on Monday that the severity of the situation cannot be overstated.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13924803/biltmore-estate-largest-private-house-damaged-hurricane-helene.html

Who is Donald Harris? Meet Kamala's 'Marxist' father who lives very close to White House yet is nowhere to be found in VP's life

Kamala Harris' West Wing office is less than a mile from her father's Washington, D.C. home. But they could not be further apart.

Despite the proximity between father and world-famous daughter, there is no record of Donald, 86, ever having visited her in the White House. His name does not appear in any of the publicly available visitor logs from her three-and-a-half years in office. Nor are there any recent public photographs of the pair together.

It is possible that the VP has privately hosted her father in her government-provided home – at the United States Naval Observatory in DC – >where visitor records are not public.

But it is perhaps more likely that Donald Harris has kept a deliberate distance, determined to stay away from what he has described as the 'political hullabaloo' surrounding his daughter, whose controversial comments he once criticized as 'a travesty'. For her part, VP Harris has previously described their relationship as 'not close'.

So just who is Donald Harris?

'Mostly my mother who raised us'

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago over the summer, as Harris formally accepted the party nomination – she made a brief but perhaps telling mention of her father. After telling the crowd that her father had encouraged her to be 'fearless', she added: 'It was mostly my mother who raised us.' And as the cameras panned to her self-described 'big, blended family' in the audience – including her stepchildren, husband Doug, and even Doug's ex-wife – Donald Harris was glaringly absent. It was not clear if he'd been invited, or whether he chose not to come. But Kamala would've had good reason to hope he stayed away.

Marxist lightning rod

Donald Harris, who turned 86 the day after his daughter gave the biggest speech of her life, is a former professor of economics whose politics do little to persuade the Democrat's critics that Kamala is not a proponent of hard-left beliefs. Forged in 1960s academia, his aggressively Marxist outlook makes him a lightning rod for attacks by Republicans.

Donald has also used his qualifications in later life by offering economic advice to the systemically corrupt Jamaican government – something that his daughter's campaign will no doubt see as unfortunate.

But whatever the true reasons, Donald Harris remains strangely missing from the public story of his daughter's life. And, even if she wins the election in November and he becomes the 'first father', theirs is a relationship that's unlikely to mend. The rupture between them dates back to Kamala's early childhood.

(continued) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13873913/donald-harris-kamala-marxist-father-white-house-vp.html

Ezra A. Cohen

@EzraACohen

You heard it from the horses mouth: Kamala is equally responsible for each of the Biden administration’s disasters over the past 3 and a half years.

3:41 PM · Oct 4, 2024

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