By james art By the time Hurricane Helena passed through Asheville, North Carolina, it had dissipated from a Category 4 storm that slammed into Florida into a less intense but no less dangerous tropical storm.
Between Tuesday, Sept. 24 and Saturday, Sept. 28, torrential rain — up to 30 inches in parts of the state — overflowed rivers by as much as 30 feet, saturating the ground and leaving the water with nowhere to go.
Buildings, vehicles and trees were lifted by the raging flood waters and swept away, often leaving behind nothing but debris and mud.
After a week of looking at images of the devastation, Shawn Smith, communications and operations manager for Fremont Area Habitat for Humanity, decided he had to help.
“Like pretty much everyone else, I just kept seeing the images and the social media posts and seeing how bad it was,” Smith said. “I was stationed at Fort Bragg (since renamed Fort Liberty), Pope Air Force Base, it’s my favorite place on earth, it’s Asheville, and the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’ve been there a lot and just to see it online…”
It was Friday, October 4, a week after Helen first climbed over the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Smith told his boss, Fremont Habitat Executive Director Joy McKay, that he wanted to go to North Carolina to help.
“I said I wanted to get the Habitat trailer,” Smith said. “We have the resources, we have the tools, we have the platform. She said “let’s ask the board” and they all said yes.
In a Facebook post that evening, Smith explained his plan and asked the Fremont community for donations.
“As many of you remember, our Fremont community came together in an incredible way during the 2019 flood, receiving donations from all over the United States. Now it’s our turn to pay that kindness forward!” Smith wrote.
The next morning, Smith parked the Habitat trailer in the Hy-Vee parking lot and hoped people would come.
“Eight hours of collecting, we got so much stuff that I ended up not taking the trailer because it was too heavy for my truck,” Smith said. “And I’m glad I didn’t take it. It was a rough ride there as I went through all the back roads as all the main highways were closed and semi winding roads with my truck, it would have been a nightmare if I had taken it.’
Instead, Smith loaded what he could fit into the bed of his truck — including a generator, tools and chain saws — and entrusted the rest of the donations to a group that was already preparing two semi-trucks to bring supplies to North Carolina.
“It was a lot safer,” Smith said. “I took what I could and then, ‘Okay, we’ll put the rest on your trailer.’
Smith left the next morning. Google Maps will tell you that driving from Fremont to Asheville should take about 17 to 18 hours. For Smith, it took about 24 hours, including a short three-hour nap in his truck.
“I loaded the truck with as many supplies as I could and (I) didn’t want to get a hotel because I can’t bring all that stuff,” Smith said. “And it was the middle of the night, it’s hard to find a place to camp, so I just thought I’d take a nap and carry on.”
On Monday, Oct. 7, Smith saw for the first time the devastation Helena wreaked on the Asheville area.
“I drove some supplies with a guy into (Madison) County and I just followed him and then you get off the main roads that are open and then you just see, ‘oh wow,'” Smith said. “I was supposed to go to an address, but the address was no longer there. They tell themselves this is where it should be, but it’s not there.
Smith met with local residents whose lives had been swept away.
“There’s this couple,” Smith said. “They did everything right (to) be self-sufficient … They were debt-free. He just poured it on me one day and said, “I paid cash for everything. I have zero debt,” and he lost the outboard (4×4 utility vehicle) he had, was swept down the river, his one-ton pickup truck, down the river. And he said, “and these aren’t toys to me, they’re tools.” He said, “I use these,” and then his wife’s Jeep was swept away, so they had no vehicles. They had all their own food sources, all their own protein, their gardens, their cans, all of that is gone.
There was a palpable sense of distrust in the federal government, Smith said. There was a community of about 20 houses nestled away from a river. The people who lived there would not go outside if there were aid workers in the area.
The man whose vehicles were swept away, he was carrying supplies to the people in that neighborhood using a kayak and a rope stretched across the river, which he used to pull himself against the current.
“They weren’t going to come out and say we need something, they were going to wait for the people they trusted,” Smith’s man said. “He said, ‘yeah, in the evening we all cook together and everyone starts talking about what they need and what’s coming up,’ and they really come together as a community.”
Winter is coming, and many people in the area still don’t have heat or electricity. For some, it will be months before power is restored, Smith said.
“Every city official I talked to, their biggest fear was winter,” Smith said. “There’s an official in (Madison) County, he was saying, ‘We’re not going to have power all winter,’ because they’re a really small county, they’re up in the mountains and the (power) lines are intertwined with the mountainside, the mudslides, and they’re as the loss of life will increase because of the winter. I think that’s their biggest fear is surviving the winter.”
Smith was in Fremont during the 2019 flood, which he said was “crazy,” but nowhere near what residents here went through.
“It’s at least a hundred times worse than what our floods were,” he said. “We had no loss of life, whole neighborhoods didn’t disappear. We haven’t destroyed our entire center. It’s not even scoped. When we had our flood, the water was coming up to (the Bell Street Viaduct), coming up to the viaduct, and it was crazy to me, but when you’re driving and the water main is 20 feet above your truck, you can’t…”
Smith also mentioned the psychological trauma many of the area’s residents have gone through and are still going through.
“Mental health is going to be a major issue,” he said. “They need to bring in a mental health provider. I don’t know how you rank, like, who’s damaged the most, I just think there’s going to be a wide variety of people who need help.
On the way back to Fremont, Smith was overcome with what might be a sort of survivor’s guilt, knowing he was returning to a more stable environment and thinking about all the help he wanted to provide.
“There’s a lot of huge guilt,” he said. “Like, ‘I’ve only got one week,’ but from a health standpoint, I had to be thankful that I had a great executive. We have a great board. And they just said yes, go. I’ve been blessed to have that flexibility to be like I want to help and I can, I’m able. I was there for a week and when I came back, I wished I could have stayed longer.”
For more information on helping recent hurricane victims or to make a donation, visit redcross.org/about-us/our-work/disaster-relief/hurricane-relief/hurricane-helene.html.