“Completely and Completely Erased”: How Helene destroyed the mountain village

There were no services in the church on Sunday morning First Baptist Church. There were no hymns, sermons, or communion. But there was a hug in the parking lot and tears run down tired cheeksand more importantly food and water for everyone who have finally managed to escape the devastation that seems to have engulfed this mountain town.

Shepherd Jeff Dowdy and his wife Melody they spent more than four hours sawing their way out of their neighborhood to help get the aid station next door up and running Red Cross.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” he said. Jeff48 years old. “This is not a typical Sunday morning. But it’s also a ministry.”

Just below the hill and in every direction lay almost indescribable scenes of destruction and suffering. The cars were high in the branches by the river Swannanoa. Houses were tossed and broken and then deposited far from their foundations, sometimes upside down, sometimes split in half where the river had left them.

AND a thick layer of mud covered the citywhich left many roads impassable and many houses and businesses buried like a modern day Pompeii. Even as the trees on the slopes above showed the first hint of fall color, the air smelled of mud and debris.

More than two days after Helentroops National Guard They came and went. Ambulance, police and fire sirens sounded every few minutes as search and rescue missions continued. So many back roads remained impassable, the fate of the residents along them a mystery, as was the fate of so many small communities in this green corner western north carolina remained shrouded in lack of contact with the outside world.

Joe Dancy and Jenna Shaw They described the scene early Friday morning Swannanoa which would seem almost hard to believe if it weren’t for the fact that many others here had similar stories of narrow and harrowing face-to-face escapes an unprecedented disaster.

They said they woke up before dawn to walk their dog and saw water rising through the yard. In less than an hour, as the water rose more than 1.2 meters (4 feet), they rushed to escape with their dog and three cats. At one point they realized they were running out of time, Dancing he shouted down the street where he saw a member of the group National Guard. The soldier tried to reach them but was unable to because of the swift current.

“It was so quick,” he said. Shaw29, who at one point was floating in the double bed. “We called 911, but the call didn’t come through.”

donors and Shaw They were thinking about retirement shelterbut they realized they would be trapped if the water continued to rise. Truck from donors soon sailed. Finally, the couple put their cats in a plastic box and walked out of the room together into the rising river. Swannanoa.

“We are very lucky”he recalled Dancing32 years old. “There really was a point where we thought we weren’t going to make it.

In the days after the storm hit, only limited supplies reached this town and others around it. But on Sunday First Baptist Church He was given enough water to last several hours and peanut butter sandwiches and hamburgers, which he distributed to the growing line of people arriving in the parking lot, which is on a rare rise in this flooded location.

“We’ll be a beacon up here,” said the preacher’s wife, Melody Dowdy46 years old.

The man who grilled hamburgers TJ Whitt43, shared her own story of loss.

“My whole house slid down the mountain about 18 meters (60 feet) with my whole family inside.”he said Whitt. “But by the grace of God we managed to get out. “We are luckier than most here because we were able to go back and get our clothes, personal items, things that are most important to us: wedding rings, birth certificates… We grabbed them and left.”

Whitt, his knuckles bloody from breaking the windows of his house in a panic, wondered aloud what the future held for a place like Swannanoawhere he has lived for more than two decades.

“It will never be the same,” he said. Swannanoa It is not a mecca for tourists and high-end retirees Ashvillejust to the west. There aren’t many craft breweries and high-end restaurants. There is no attraction that equals it The Biltmore Housea historic house and museum built for the family Vanderbilt. It is a community of mostly working people of modest means, many of whom have called this valley home their entire lives.

Every year, he said Whitthe and his wife buy meat from the cow and freeze it for later use. On Sunday, he brought meat from a whole cow to grill hundreds of hamburgers to give out to strangers in need. Somehow, in her own moment of trauma, she found gratitude.

“Thank goodness we were in the mountains so we didn’t. we are flooding“, he said. “We have other relatives who didn’t make it… It’s hard. It’s going to be bad. “We’re just going to try to do what we can to take care of everybody.”

Nearby, the pastor’s wife nodded in the direction Whitt while he returned to the grill.

“He’s lost everything, but he’s giving everything he’s got”she said. “That’s the beauty of mountain people.

On Sunday at noon, Dancing and Shaw They were ankle deep in mud in the backyard and inside their little house North Avenue in Swannanoatrying to recover some of his large collection of records, house plants and anything else that wasn’t destroyed, which wasn’t much.

Even in the midst of the mess and mud, they also felt happiness. They were alive. Friends and family came to the rescue. Looking at the 6-foot-tall watermark on their wall, they imagined how easily things could have been different.

“All our lives have been here”he said Shaw about their home and the city they love. “I don’t think it will be the same for years.

“It won’t,” he agreed. Dancing. “But I’m ready restore. “I’m not leaving.”

Despite that strength, a sense of sadness, despair and uncertainty hung over this once-picturesque town on Sunday. Not far on the road 70Hundreds of people lined up in front of the building Pisgah Brewing Company with jugs and bottles in hand, waiting for the water that was so hard to find. Nearby, someone found an 18-wheeler that crashed during the storm was full of bottled water, and dozens of people came to take boxes and hand out boxes to others until the police arrived and yelled at them to leave.

“They are stealing!” one shouted as the crowd parted.

back inside SwannanoaAs the day turned into another without power, water or security, parts of the city seemed frozen in time before the storm. Grocery store sign English advertised tomatoes for sale. Poster from Hardware Ace It read, “Chrysanthemums, $9.99.” The pumpkins were still out. Ledford’s Produce.

But the new reality was inevitable.

On street after street flooded houses and vehicles and the mangled bodies bore orange spray paint, a sign that the authorities were there to search for the dead and the living. Search and rescue teams continued as the day approached dusk, and on a riverside street, police muttered about the possibility that a body had been found in the nearby wreckage. Several people pitched a tent near a local school. A helicopter landed on it late in the afternoon First Baptist Church deliver supplies.

nearby Austin Decerbo28 years old, was talking to a friend, Mike Holley” and pointed to the place where his mother’s house had stood only a few days ago, but where there was nothing now.

“I saw the current carry her away. All you could see was river“, he said Decerbus. “I grew up in that house… It will never be the same. Not even close.”

Holly62, who said he raised his family here and called Swannanoa his home for decades, he looked out over a once-familiar landscape that was now completely different.

“All these places are gone,” he said, describing one by one the many houses that once lined the river but were washed away by the river. “Unbelievable,” he said. “It was completely and utterly erased.

(c) 2024, The Washington Post