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The river raged and rose, faster and then faster. By the time the water reached their yard, Baxter Eller told his wife, “We gotta go.” They fled to huddle with neighbors inside a Baptist church on higher ground. She drove one vehicle there as the waters swelled around her. He left just a moment later, but had to abandon their Chevy SUV and wade to the church as the rapids swept it away. “It just came up so fast,” Baxter, 65, recalled, shaking his head. “In five minutes, the water had risen probably six feet.” Theirs was only one tale of narrow escape, and of an unimaginable loss, that has begun to trickle out from the small communities that line the hills and valleys in and around North Carolina hit hard by the hurricane.