Remembering Helene – One Year Later
It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Hurricane turned tropical storm Helene hit our area. I tried to write about it when it happened, but it was too overwhelming. I did write bits and pieces so now I’ll try and finish the story. The images I’m posting were taken within the first couple weeks after the storm.
Four days before hurricane Helene arrived in the mountains, they were saying it would turn into a tropical storm and pass right over the mountains. We’ve had tropical storms pass through our area before with little or no damage so it seemed it would be the same as what we’ve already experienced. Lots of rain, some wind and minor flooding where it always occurs by rivers and streams. Then two days before the storm the weather people were saying the rain totals were increasing and it was a great concern and a real flooding threat. A moisture push three days ahead of Helene had rainfall totals of 10+ inches in some areas and some flooding was already occurring. There were pleas to get a plan in place to move to higher ground and be prepared for power outages. One day before Helene they were calling it a life-threatening event and the word ‘catastrophic’ was being used.
I don’t live in a flood plain so I wasn’t terribly concerned. Even with all the warnings I didn’t grasp how bad this could be. Before I went to bed Thursday night Sep. 26, I filled 3 pitchers full of water for handwashing and cooking just in case our power went out. Silly me. We would need much, much more than that in the days to come.
Sept 27 (the day of the hurricane)
I woke up around 5:45 am to the sound of pounding rain and wind. The power was still on and my first thought was, oh good, the coffee maker already auto perked so I can have some hot coffee. It was still dark outside, so we couldn’t see much. But our hearing was just fine as we heard tree after tree start falling around our home and pretty soon the power went out.
As night turned into day we could only watch as the trees swayed and swayed back and forth. Large pine trees close to the house were coming out of the ground. The wind was blowing and swirling so bad it was almost as if you couldn’t tell which way they were going to fall. We watched as 8 trees fell about 10 feet from our house onto our shed. We prayed none would hit the house and thank goodness they didn’t.
Mid-morning, we texted the kids to see how they were doing. We only heard from my daughter, Jenny, who let us know she was safe but their neighborhood was severely damaged. We didn’t hear from our son. Soon after the text from my daughter cell service went out and any and all communications were gone.
Late in the afternoon the sun came out and the rains let up. The wind was still pretty strong, but had let up some. Neighbors slowing started coming out of their homes to survey damage and to check on others. So, so, so many trees downed and a ton of debris covered everything. We live in a cul-de-sac and a large tree fell across the road blocking any access out. Luckily our neighbors were able to cut the large limbs hanging from the tree and a car could just pass under it on one side.
I needed to see if my daughter Jenny and son-in-law were OK. They live only a mile from us. As we made our way out of our neighborhood, we got our first look at more damage. Still more and more trees down, some collapsing the roofs of our neighbor’s homes. As we approached the entrance to her neighborhood, it was blocked by a fallen tree and power lines. We would have to use the other entrance. Driving to their home we had to dodge trees across the road and debris. When we got pretty close to her house, a huge tree blocked the road and we couldn’t drive any further. We got out to walk learning really quickly we would need to zig-zag through yards to avoid walking on power lines. Once we reached their house, I was so happy to see no obvious damage to the house and no large trees had fallen in their yard. It felt good to give them a big hug.
Sept 28 (the next day)
Communication of any kind at this point was non-existent, but I had to check on my son who lived across town. We decided to see if we could make it since we didn’t really know the status of the roads. The trip was pretty depressing as we saw firsthand some of the damage that occurred. However, we were able to make it fine and was overjoyed to see them cooking breakfast by using a generator. The grandkids were oblivious to the seriousness of what had occurred so it was wonderful to have a little bit of fun playtime with them that morning. They informed us they would be heading out of town to my daughter-in-law’s parents house if they could find a back road out. (The interstates were closed because of damage to the roads and debris.) I was happy they were going because I knew it would be a while before power and water were available again.
Later that afternoon I heard that the grocery store Publix was open as they had a big store generator to keep power on. By now it was quite obvious we were going to be without power for a while. Personally, we could heat water with our gas stove and it would be nice to at least have coffee in the morning so I set out to the store just get some instant. Ew. But better than nothing.
Publix was a complete madhouse. I went straight to the coffee aisle. Hmmm, others had that same idea. Only decaf left. Drat! Still better than nothing. I grabbed some paper plates and headed to get in line. What a mess. Every register that was open had a line from the register down an aisle to the back of the store. I found the back of one and thought I must be crazy to stand in this line. As I slowly inched forward, I came to realize I had picked the beer and chip aisle. Nice…. It was the most popular aisle, so not only were people in line, but people were wanting to reach the beers. The cooler was nearly empty already, but I did notice the non-alcoholic beers were still plentiful.
Still inching my way forward to the register, I had plenty of time to browse the chips and nuts, so why not grab a couple bags of those too. Someone discarded a bottle of wine next to some chips so why the heck not. Picked that up too. My arms were getting pretty full at this point because there were no shopping carts left when I came in but the kind lady in front of me had brough some bags and let me have one. The guy in back of me opened one of his beers and was drinking it while waiting in line. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed but heck, we’d just been through a disastrous hurricane. Then he wanted to read my aura or something. I kept facing the front after that.
After an hour standing in line, I was able to make it out of the store without my aura being read. Bless the people working on the registers that day.
And the days after that…
Beyond those first couple of days of being in survival mode, the days went by basically the same. During the day we listened to sirens, helicopters, and chain saws until it was too dark to continue. Our neighbor had a whole house generator and let us come and get clean water. (Our neighborhood is on wells which need electricity to operate.). We have a pond at the edge of our property that we used to collect water for flushing toilets. We pulled the car out of the garage twice a day to listen to the news on the radio while charging our phones. I went out every day briefly to see if I could get any gas. We read lots of books and took naps. Then we went to bed at 8:30 because it was dark and the lanterns we had were just ok at putting out light.
About 6 days after the storm, one of our neighbors had a cookout with a large side of bbq meat that had defrosted. He invited everyone on our street and said to bring anything we could, but it was not necessary. We had canned green beans from the garden so that was what we brought. Surprisingly, everyone brought something different and it was ALL delicious. It was a joyous dinner and it was amazing to have the nicest conversations with neighbors that we knew and some we didn’t know all while we were going through much of the same things.
On day 9, with still no power or water I really, really needed a shower and dirty clothes were piling up. My parents had also gone out of town to stay with my aunt, but their lake house about an hour away now had power and water. So I packed my car with laundry and started out to their place. About 30 minutes into my drive my husband called and said “WE HAVE POWER!!” Thank you Lord!!! I decided not to turn around but to continue on and check out my parents property to make sure there was no damage. All was good!
Today…
All these months later I can see hope and recovery for our mountains. Parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway are still closed because of landslides and one of the interstates is still rebuilding from some very severe damage. But businesses are opening back up and it is slowing becoming more like the Asheville I love. There is probably so much more I could write about this devastating event for our mountains, but I’ll leave it here for now.
Truly I’ll never forget the incredible amount of helping hands, donations and people giving (and still giving!) of their time to help us recover. In the darkest moments of devastation I was able to witness the beautiful side of humanity.
(I’ve commented on a few of these images if you click to view.)
