The hollering went on for hours, barely audible over the roar of the thrashing French Broad River.

“Bruce!” people shouted from shore.

One word was all Bruce Tipton could muster in response, and he repeated it agonizingly: “Help!”

Mr. Tipton, 75, was clinging to a tree, surrounded by a torrent of murky brown water that had just crushed his trailer home and flung him onto the tree. He was less than 50 yards from shore, but the way the river was moving, he seemed to be on a remote island.

For roughly seven hours, his family, friends and neighbors looked on from the railroad tracks uphill from the edge of the surging water. They pulled out a pair of binoculars and trained a car’s high beams on the tree that had become his lifeline, but it was hard to spot him. Still, they could hear his cries for help.

“I’m not going to tell you I’m going to have nightmares about it, but why wouldn’t I?” said Scott Eastman, a longtime neighbor who was among the people shouting from the riverbank. “To hear somebody yelling ‘Help!’ for hours and to not be able to get to him? It’s just sickening to me.”