|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Assembly is putting storm coverage outside of our paywall and making it free to republish in any local or regional outlet.
Storms Reback is an Asheville-based journalist who recently wrote about the disappearance of climate safe havens.
My wife, son, and I knew Hurricane Helene was creeping toward our home in East Asheville, but we weren’t overly concerned. The hurricanes we were familiar with typically diminished in power as they moved inland, and Asheville is 500 miles from where Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region.
When the first wave of torrential rain hit Asheville last Wednesday, I canceled a neighborhood association meeting and watched a movie with my wife at home. I was embracing a business-as-usual attitude when I should have been filling as many empty containers as I could find with water, stocking up on food, and getting ready for our region to get blasted into the Stone Age.
On Thursday, we began receiving texts and emails about the possibility of historic flooding. But we live on the side of a hill—we figured we’d be fine. And we were, until suddenly we weren’t.
At around 10 a.m. on Friday, my wife went to get a glass of water only to discover that nothing was coming out of the tap. When we turned to the internet for answers, we found we had no service. Every text we sent bounced back. Thanks to our solar panels, we had electricity, but, except for those with generators, none of our neighbors did.
When the buckets of rain and heavy winds abated just before noon, we ventured outside to check our valley’s eponymous stream, Haw Creek. Usually a gentle trickle less than 10 feet wide, it now spanned roughly 150 feet and had completely taken over a neighbor’s backyard. Their large wooden playhouse was now pinned to the upstream side of a bridge that spanned the creek, and some of their lawn furniture was tangled in the limbs of a tree.
We were so stunned by the sight we failed to notice that we had walked directly beneath a power line that was sagging under the weight of an uprooted tree.
As neighbors began to emerge from their houses, we probed them for information. Did they have electricity, internet, cell service, water? The answer was always no. The only things people did have were water in their basements, downed trees in their yards, and dread in their bellies.
My wife and I walked around our neighborhood, checking in with friends and surveying the damage. As we were heading home, a car approached us and stopped in the middle of the road. “A tree fell on the house we rent and there’s a big hole in the roof,” said the driver, who looked to be in his 20s and in a state of shock. “What do we do?”
What do you do? My wife and I drove to the fire station on Tunnel Road early that evening looking for answers. It’s only a mile away but felt like 20. The route we usually take was blocked by an enormous tree. On Tunnel Road, a four-lane thoroughfare to Swannanoa and Black Mountain and the area’s main vehicular artery, we discovered that none of the traffic lights were working and all the businesses were closed.
As neighbors began to emerge from their houses, we probed them for information. Did they have electricity, internet, cell service, water? The answer was always no.
We stopped at the Asheville Fire Station 8 looking for water and information. The firefighters had neither. They were as cut off from the world as we were, unable to even tell their own families they were safe.
Our conversation was repeatedly interrupted by sirens from emergency vehicles barreling down the road. The side of one truck read, “New Jersey Search and Rescue,” which was alternately comforting and disturbing. The firefighters told us that all first responders in the area were busy performing swift-water rescues. In this new world order, responding to medical emergencies such as strokes or heart attacks had become secondary by necessity.
RELATED STORIES
Looking Up in Chimney Rock
Eleven months after Hurricane Helene devastated the mountain town, tourists are trickling back.
FEMA’s Uncertain Future Leaves N.C. and Other States in Limbo
Trump’s shifting position on FEMA has created uncertainty for storm-prone southern states.
Back on Track
Hurricane Helene wiped out several major rail lines in Western N.C. Now most are back up and running. Here are scenes from the rebuilding.
The Long Road to Recovery
North Carolina has about $5.5 billion reserved for emergencies, but it will take several weeks to assess storm damage.
As Floods Subside, Uncertainty Reigns
In Black Mountain, residents encounter blocked roads, short supplies, and unimaginable damage.
How to Get Help After Hurricane Helene
Here’s what to know about state and federal assistance programs in the wake of the catastrophic storm and flooding in Western North Carolina.
Out of curiosity my wife and I took a different route home. This was a mistake. We repeatedly had to inch our way past downed trees and power lines that reduced the road to a single lane—or worse. Sometimes we proceeded with only two tires on asphalt.
Rumors became the main form of communication. We tried to focus on those that might prove useful. Supposedly there was cell service in parts of West Asheville. We drove there early Saturday morning, but all we found was more devastation. As we crossed the French Broad River on I-240, we saw that the river was nearly twice its usual size and had encroached on most of the businesses in the River Arts District.
Failing to find cell service, we searched for water. We headed for the stretch of Merrimon Avenue just north of downtown that has three grocery stores within several hundred yards of each other. The only one that looked encouraging was Harris Teeter, which had a handwritten note on the front door promising it would open at 9:15 a.m. The line of people waiting to get inside was a hundred yards long.
The line of cars waiting to get gas at the Shell station on the corner of Broadway and I-240 was even longer. To get around it, we took a meandering route that required reversing down several streets that were blocked by horizontal trees. Our new destination was the Lowe’s on the corner of South Tunnel Road and Swannanoa River Road. What we found made me audibly gasp. A shipping container had settled in the middle of the bridge my family and I used to get to the movie theater and Target on the other side of the Swannanoa River. U-Haul trucks from the office on Swannanoa River Road were scattered about like empty tin cans. And the road itself was gone. Not damaged—gone.
As frightened as we were, we were better off than most people. Our house was relatively unscathed and we had power, so we turned our attention to helping others. At 10 a.m. Saturday morning we hosted a radio listening party in our driveway, with neighbors gathered around our car to listen to a city press conference on Blue Ridge Public Radio. City officials advised us to stay home, boil our water, and prevent our children from playing in the flood water.
One official corrected himself after describing the flooding as “catastrophic,” changing his description to “Biblical.” Another compared the damage Helene inflicted on the area to what Katrina had done to New Orleans. They sounded even more traumatized than we were. It was not comforting.
They didn’t have any estimates on when basic services might be restored. The lack of water was our main concern. Our next-door neighbors were drinking the water from their hot water heater. Others were gathering water from the creek. We started boiling the rainwater we’d collected in two five-gallon buckets.
It felt like we were living through the pandemic again, but at least then we could binge-watch Netflix. Now, there were too many hours in the day to fret about all the things we didn’t have.
To keep busy and feel useful, I grabbed my chainsaw and started cutting up a neighbor’s crabapple tree, which had split in two during the storm. Soon another neighbor with a chainsaw joined me, then another, and in just a few hours we reduced the tree to a pickup bed full of next year’s firewood. For a brief moment it felt like the three of us, armed with chainsaws, could actually put a dent in the hundreds—thousands?—of trees that had fallen on houses, cars, and roads all over Asheville. I was about to suggest we start cutting the tree that was blocking the road to the East Asheville Library when I remembered that a downed power line was tangled in its limbs. This was a job for professionals.
There was a rumor that the Exxon station on Tunnel Road was open, so my wife drove straight there. During her hour-and-a-half wait, she bonded with others hurting in their individual ways, including a woman who couldn’t get the methadone she needed, a military veteran whose PTSD the storm had revived, and a woman wearing a hard hat that read, “It’d be dumb to have a tree fall on my head when I had a hard hat sitting in my basement.” My wife purchased two bottles of water, two soft drinks, and some menstrual pads. “That’ll be $23,” the cashier told her. “Cash only.”
On the way home, she saw that someone had attached large sheets of paper to the sign outside of Groce United Methodist Church with duct tape to create a public information board. Listed on it was vital information: where to buy groceries, which roads were passable, where spotty cell service was available.
Our cell provider was T-Mobile, but apparently those who had Verizon were able to use their phones in the parking lot of the Asheville Mall. When we arrived there Saturday evening, there were hundreds of cars in the parking lot, and everyone was walking around with their phones to their ears. Our phones didn’t work, but a man who lived off Lower Grassy Branch Road let us use his. We were finally able to leave messages with family members letting them know we were safe.
A local man who had been in Charlotte had just reunited with his wife in the parking lot. He confirmed the news we’d heard on that day’s 5 p.m. radio briefing that all the highways in and out of Asheville were closed except I-26 East. The man had just taken it and I-85 North to drive in from Charlotte, and it had only taken him three hours. During that same briefing, officials had insinuated that water service might not be restored in Asheville for weeks.
We packed up that night and hit the road first thing in the morning. Prior to Helene, driving an all-electric vehicle was somewhat of a liability. Long road trips required elaborate planning and were often rife with range anxiety. But the hurricane flipped that equation on its head. While cars waited hours for gas at stations alongside the highway, we knew we could easily make it to Greenville, South Carolina.
It was only when our phones started working again just across the state line that we discovered the true extent of the storm’s damage. People stuck on roofs. Houses washed away. Loved ones unaccounted for. Whole towns destroyed.
How devastating was Hurricane Helene? My family and I suffered through a miserable stretch of anxiety-riddled days. Compared to nearly everyone else in the region, we were lucky.
Storms Reback has written five nonfiction books, including Ship It Holla Ballas!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become the Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew and In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. He lives in Durham with his wife and son.