The meme of “bears in canoes” might seem like a distant memory now, a quaint reaction to what initially appeared to be just another heavy rainfall in Asheville. Before Hurricane Helene made its presence felt in the mountains, a half-foot of rain had already saturated the region, prompting lighthearted memes of Asheville’s bears comically navigating flooded streets in canoes and kayaks. It was a moment captured with humor, a seemingly fleeting inconvenience.
Many, including myself, shared these memes, finding a brief levity in the face of rising waters.
However, that was before we understood the true impact of Hurricane Helene. Looking back now, in the aftermath, those memes feel like they belong to another era entirely.
As I write this on Saturday, a week after Helene’s devastating passage, life seems to have resumed a semblance of normalcy. A squirrel outside my window busily nibbles on an acorn, mirroring the typical rhythm of a fall day. Yet, the landscape of his playground – my backyard – tells a different story. Five towering Leyland cypresses were felled by the storm, two crashing onto my roof and obliterating a significant portion of the privacy fence along that side of the yard.
And in the grand scheme of things, we were fortunate. Incredibly fortunate.
Minor damage to the gutters was the extent of the impact on our roof. We are alive and safe, a statement tragically not true for many families in these mountains. The death toll in Buncombe County alone stood at 72 as of Friday, a grim figure that is sadly expected to climb, mirroring the devastation in neighboring counties.
Yes, my yard is a chaotic mess, and we endured days with limited or no water and electricity. But compared to my neighbors at the end of our street, we are living in luxury. Approximately a dozen homes there were inundated when Cane Creek, normally a modest 30 feet wide, swelled into a monstrous half-mile-wide torrent on September 27th, its current transforming into a ferocious whitewater rapid.
A Helpless Feeling from Afar
My wife, Grace, and I were on vacation in Maine and Boston when the storm struck, a long-anticipated escape to Acadia National Park largely behind us. It was our son, Jack, who was home, who began sending us alarming pictures and videos of the rapidly rising waters that Friday morning.
Around 11 a.m., Jack called, his voice strained, to relay the news that Cane Creek was surging down the street at the end of our block, resembling a river more than a creek.
Stranded in Maine, en route to Boston for our flight, we felt utterly helpless, paralyzed by distance. All we could do was cling to hope and pray that no lives would be lost.
Jack’s video footage showed the horrifying reality: neighbors’ homes submerged in three to four feet of muddy creek water. Simultaneously, emergency weather alerts flashed on my phone, predicting that the French Broad River at Fletcher wouldn’t crest until 8 p.m. that night. Cane Creek was already wreaking havoc, and as a tributary of the French Broad, we could only imagine the escalating danger in our neighborhood. The water relentlessly crept upwards, reaching the edge of my next-door neighbor’s driveway.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it seemed to stop. Jack called again around 1 p.m. to announce that the water had apparently crested and was beginning to recede.
The knot of anxiety in my stomach loosened, just slightly. By then, we had reached Boston, effectively cut off from returning home as airports began shutting down and flights were being canceled en masse.
To be frank, we had tickets to a Red Sox game that evening. Fenway Park had long been on my bucket list, so we decided to go. It was a memorable experience, despite the notoriously cramped seating, a relic of 1912 design. Grace, however, spent a significant portion of the game frantically searching for a flight home.
We eventually managed to get a flight into Charlotte on Saturday, and Jack drove to pick us up, bringing us home to Fletcher late that afternoon. The scene that greeted us was sobering. Some neighbors had already begun the arduous task of salvaging their waterlogged belongings, piling first-floor possessions in their front yards, a testament to the speed and ferocity of the floodwaters.
Jack recounted his experience of helping to rescue people trapped in their homes as the water rose with terrifying speed. Even for a strong 26-year-old like Jack, he described the struggle to maintain his footing against the powerful current.
For the next couple of days, with power still out, our street transformed into a communal kitchen. Neighbors pooled resources, bringing out frozen foods destined to spoil and sharing what cold beers remained. It was an unexpected opportunity for community bonding, fostering connections with neighbors we usually only exchanged waves with. Children, oblivious to the disaster, ran around and rode bikes, evoking a simpler time before screens dominated our lives.
Neighborhood Flooding: Echoes of Devastation
My neighbor at the end of the block, Chris Gangestad, was someone I knew primarily as the vintage VW van enthusiast who was always tinkering in his driveway. His house was among those flooded, enduring 18 inches of Cane Creek water inside and a staggering 21 inches in his garage. He lost a car and one of his cherished vans to the flood.
“Pretty much everything on the lower level,” Gangestad recounted last Monday, his voice weary. “The smell in the garage is absolutely horrid. It hits you like a brick wall when you open the door.” A noxious cocktail of oil, antifreeze, creek muck, dog food, and the countless other items typically stored in a garage assaulted the senses.
Within days, Gangestad and his family had embarked on the grueling process of demolition, ripping out all the lower level flooring, drywall, and insulation down to the studs. They had also filed a claim with FEMA, navigating the bureaucratic maze of disaster relief.
“We will rebuild,” Gangestad, a retired mechanic, declared with stoic resolve, standing amidst the gutted shell of his two-story home. He, his wife Kelli, and their three children had moved into the house in May 2021, never imagining the possibility of flooding.
“No, not at all,” Gangestad confirmed. “We were told that we didn’t need flood insurance, and we’re not in a flood plain. So why would we buy it?”
This is a sentiment that will undoubtedly resonate throughout the region. The harsh reality is that many residents lack flood insurance, often unaware of the true flood risks associated with their properties, a detail often overlooked during the home buying process. My wife and I were no exception.
Furthermore, many homes situated near waterways in this area are not luxury estates. Quite the contrary, often low-lying land is more affordable, attracting working-class families rather than affluent individuals seeking scenic views. It is, or rather, was, what they could afford. My neighborhood is a microcosm of this, populated by nurses, teachers, utility linemen, police officers, retirees, and factory workers – the backbone of our community.
On that fateful Friday, as the water surged, Gangestad had to bravely rescue his wife from their rapidly flooding home, using a garden hose tied to a stop sign across the street as a makeshift safety line. “That water was about chest deep, and I’m six and a half feet tall,” he emphasized, “raging current.”
Despite the immense loss and disruption, Gangestad, at 43, displayed remarkable resilience and a positive outlook. “I mean, you go down the road, there’s people who had it up to four feet, so we got lucky in that sense,” he said, highlighting a sense of perspective amidst personal tragedy.
Survivor’s Guilt and the Weight of Perspective
I mentioned to Gangestad the survivor’s guilt that Grace and I were grappling with, the tears she shed as we first entered our neighborhood and witnessed the devastation.
“Why would you have survivor’s guilt?” he countered. “Survivor’s luck. Just be happy for yourself that it didn’t happen. I wouldn’t have survivor’s guilt, for sure.”
Gangestad estimated his immediate losses at around $20,000, just from the possessions he had managed to carry out of his house that day. This figure didn’t even begin to account for the extensive structural damage to his home.
Gangestad and his family are currently living upstairs in their damaged home, grateful for the roof over their heads, however compromised.
It’s in moments like these that perspective becomes starkly clear.
The urgency of removing waterlogged drywall and insulation to prevent mold growth is paramount. After assisting another neighbor with this backbreaking task for just three hours on Wednesday, the sheer physical labor and unpleasantness became palpable. Ripping out soaked flooring, drywall, and insulation with crowbars and hammers is a grueling process.
The drywall, saturated with water, disintegrates to the consistency of wet newspaper. Insulation chunks, waterlogged, weigh upwards of 20 or 30 pounds. A mask is essential, not only for dust but also to mitigate the pervasive mildew smell, a peculiar, slightly acrid odor that lingers for hours.
A heartfelt acknowledgment is due to the Baptist mission church volunteers, two separate groups, who spontaneously appeared in our neighborhood and began assisting with this arduous work. The speed and efficiency of a volunteer assembly line, with eight or ten people efficiently tossing waterlogged debris into front yards, is truly remarkable.
My own house, comparatively, emerged largely unscathed, making my anxieties about bent gutters and a damaged fence seem almost frivolous.
Jack, myself, and several neighbors and friends spent six hours on Sunday wrestling with one Leyland cypress that had crashed onto our roof, and three others that had fallen in the yard or onto the shed. The sheer size and weight of these trees, and the countless branches that needed to be severed to access the trunk, were astonishing.
We hired a tree crew to remove the final cypress precariously perched on the higher section of the roof and to haul away the remaining trunks. Now, the next tasks loom: stump grinding and fence repair.
These are minor inconveniences, “small potatoes,” in the face of the widespread grief and loss. The staggering number of missing persons, the 72 confirmed deaths in Buncombe County alone as of last week, paint a grim picture. Search and rescue, or now, recovery efforts, remain ongoing.
Perspective.
I find myself compulsively watching videos and news feeds depicting the utter devastation across our area. Homes torn from their foundations, floating down the French Broad River, splintered by utility poles near the River Arts District. Houses in Swannanoa submerged to the roofline, desperate residents clinging to shingles awaiting rescue. Businesses and livelihoods obliterated in the River Arts District.
It’s a form of “doom scrolling” amplified to an extreme, a habit I know is unhealthy. The cumulative weight of it all – mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion – is heavy, and yet my own situation is so much better than so many others.
Power was restored to our home on Sunday, and water service fully resumed on Monday, although a boil water advisory persisted for several days.
Gratitude for a Gigantic Relief Effort
In the midst of this crisis, immense gratitude is due to the countless individuals and organizations contributing to the community’s relief efforts. Power crews from across the country, and even from Canada, have descended upon our region. Public works crews and NCDOT workers are working tirelessly to clear roads and rebuild infrastructure. My friend, Chuck Johnson, a local real estate agent with Keller Williams, spontaneously organized a massive relief effort, distributing an incredible volume of food, water, and essential supplies to those in need.
Chuck, your selfless actions are truly inspiring.
Even the City of Asheville, often a target of criticism, deserves commendation. The scale of the water outage was immense, and city work crews are working relentlessly to restore water lines and repair damaged roads.
On Thursday, I had to venture downtown for an interview concerning the water situation. Afterwards, I drove through parts of Biltmore Village and then Swannanoa. The online photos and videos, while impactful, fail to fully convey the apocalyptic scale of the damage in certain areas.
Buildings reduced to rubble, foundations undermined, debris, mud, and wrecked vehicles scattered everywhere. Countless businesses and homes lost, and tragically, so many lives.
My own worries about homeowner’s insurance covering gutter and fence repairs, or whether to file a FEMA claim, now seem trivial. Letting the dogs out and fretting about them escaping through the makeshift fence feels almost absurd in this context. Even the desire to simply go for a swim at the YMCA feels like a distant luxury.
The constant, jarring sounds of chainsaws, helicopters, and debris being hauled away are the new soundtrack of our lives. The stories of loss and resilience are overwhelming, the needs are immense, and yet, I feel a profound sense of inadequacy, of not doing nearly enough to help those who are suffering far more. My stress, I realize, is self-inflicted and ultimately insignificant in the larger picture.
A Facebook video surfaced in my feed, showing a local man walking along a creek bed that had obliterated a road, leaving behind a trail of wrecked cars. The narrator somberly states that earlier that morning, a woman’s body had been discovered in the creek, half a mile away. Her husband remains missing.
More perspective, relentlessly delivered. As Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder aptly stated last week, “This is our Katrina.”
In the face of such devastation, what truly matters becomes acutely clear: people. Our friends. Our neighbors.
The fragility of material possessions – wallboard, vinyl siding, shingles – is starkly revealed. And sometimes, the even greater fragility of human life.
We will persevere, not just because mountain communities are known for their resilience, but because we have no other choice. We will rebuild, as Gangestad resolutely declared, but it will demand immense effort, unwavering patience, and sustained community support.
Let’s get to work. And, most importantly, let’s take care of each other every step of the way.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and surrounding communities. John Boyle has been covering western North Carolina since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at [email protected]. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
