09/06/2025
Chronicles of Helene: Ground Zero
Hurricane Helene had turned into a tropical storm by the time it reached Asheville. And I've been through some tropical storms in my home town before this. But this one had winds as high as 140 mph, while hitting a high of 106 mph in Asheville. There was also a weeks worth of rain prior to the storm even coming to Asheville, so the French Broad River ended up flooding more than it had in 1916, almost 100 years prior.
On Thursday, the 26th, I went to work, but worried if I would make it home okay before the "flood." I worked my shift in it's entirety, and made it home safely. I went home and relaxed with my roommate for a bit and went to bed.
I woke up the next morning to my phone going off quite often with alerts about flash flood warnings and such. When I say "quite often," I don't mean every 10-30 minutes, I'm referring to every minute to 5 minutes at the longest. We lost power at 4:26am on Friday. (It is important to add that my roommate, Arden, had been out of town for work, and ended up staying a majority of the storm and recovery with her grandmother an hour or two east where the destruction was not as bad. They had no power for about a week. So this takes place when it was just my other roommate, Brian, and I were home.)
I wandered out of my room hazey eyed, to assess what I could see from windows about 8:30 AM, and Brian gave me a tour of the damage outside using different "exhibits." Among that damage was a tree that had fallen across the driveway blocking Brian's vehicle in, and it was raining sideways. Power lines were beyond down. They were hanging and swaying in the windy rain. Brian heard a chainsaw off in the distance, so he put on a coat and shoes on to see if that person needed help. I decided to attempt a nap, because my sleep had been so interrupted, and there was nothing I could do but save power on my phone.
Brian and the other guy had cut up the tree that barricaded his car in the driveway, a long with many other trees attempting to find a way out of the neighborhood. Brian had stopped 3 times to come back and changed into dry clothes. I woke up to him calling my name, which startled me, in a sense for fear that he may be bearing bad news of the condition of the house. But he was just checking on me because I was oddly quiet. It was around this time he had expressed to me in a drastic manner to look outside my bedroom window because a tree had fallen right outside my window, to show me it's enormous root system. I am very thankful that the tree went the direction it did. Soon we found out that our cell service and data/internet didn't work.
Once I was awake, around 11 am, the rain had stopped, I walked outside and explored what I could - but there was an astronomical amount of trees down in every direction. Upon adventuring out, it was evident that Brian and I were very lucky to have no damage, as the rest of the heavily wooded neighborhood had damage in every which way. Many of the roads were undistinguishable, roofs caved in, cars crushed, power lines and towers were everywhere. Neighbors were trapped in their houses. At this point, we had no cell signal, no phone data/wifi, no electricity - but there was a generator in the garage with a little bit of gasoline in it, and Brian had hooked it up to the refrigerator and charging block.
Noone knew the extent of the damage from the storm, whether it was just bad in our area, or our town, we certainly didn't expect it to be the western half of the state. We only knew of what we visually saw in front of us. While the flash flood warnings had ceased, another warning came through around noon about Lake Lure's dam possibly breaking and to run for higher ground. I had heard of Lake Lure but I had never been so I didn't know how serious it was to me, but it brought on new fear. A couple hours later, at 2:36, I was exploring and wondered to a more elevated part of the neighborhood and a text came through from a friend named Brad telling me about Lake Lure. I immediately texted back to respond that I was okay, but it was too late, my reception was gone again. And here was another fear unlocked - not being able to tell my VA friends that I was alive.
Our neighborhood was behind a Lutheran campground, so while the men continued with the chainsaws trying to find a way out, I went to the campground and explored the damage there. One thing I noticed was that all the trees were mostly down, or leaning on something that would end up coming down sooner or later. And by the pond, the pine tree on the edge had broken at the bottom and fallen in the pond - but the weeping willow next to it was standing strong. It brought me back to when my mother was alive, and she always loved weeping willows because their branches can bend but they don't break, like their strength. And it was at this time that I felt the presence of my mother like she was standing next to me. It was 4:02 pm. I continued to explore the campground, and it felt like my mother was walking with me, and all the anger and rage I had been holding against her for deliberately leaving me started to slowly deminish. Maybe that was the strength I needed to keep going through the trials of the storm damage, and the chaos that came there after.
Around 6 pm, I came back to the house and I comforted my cat, and then I comforted Ardens cat while I refilled her food and water. Around 7 pm, Brian was back from chainsawing all day. He expressed how he was in pain from a time where one of the branches snapped back into his ribs, and I gave him some Advil. He then delved into a hiding place of his to find an old Xbox that still had dvd capabilities, and rummaged through a small collection of DVDs he still held dear. He hooked up the old Xbox to the generator, and together we watched Sn**ch on the night that, unbeknownst to us, would have been the end of the easiest day of the hurricane recovery.
