The First Anniversary of Helene: A Nerd's Story

 Hello Friends,

Today marks the one year anniversary of Tropical Storm Helene devastateing Western North Carolina where I live. In the wee hours of the morning people's worlds changed, towns were rendered unrecognizable, and communication practically nonexistent. The other day as Mom and I were going outd I was looking a the road were were riding on, and found it hard to believe a year ago it'd been covered in mud. 

There's of course a lot of talk this week of the the 1st year after Helene. So I decided for the anniversary to tell my story of what my family and my's experiences were with this storm. I think this well be a long one so get ready.

In the weeks leading up to the storm I was reading for the Orilium Magical Readathon, and preparing my Dean Winchester Cosplay for my fall cons the Smoky Mountain Geek Expo and the Fall WNC Comic Con. 

 

 

As we saw on the news this huge system could potentially hit our area. My anxiety flared a bit with worry, but reminded myself storms usually lost a lot of power by the time they got to the mountains of North Carolina that my anxiety was just getting me worked up. Of course the peace I had for myself was short lived when my Great Aunt mentioned she was worried, and I'm like if the older folks who've seen a few storms are getting worried, then maybe it's gonna be bad. 

Well a couple days before Helene was to hit a low came in dumping  so much rain on our heads. It was hard enough to knock a big limb out of one our popular trees on the property, and get the streams running high. This of course would add issues to the storm to come.

September 26th- 27th 

As the 26th became night I started doing some prepping. I was checking out the comic books I needed from the digital library, cause I was gonna read those to finish the readathon, and just in case the power went out I wanted to get the books on the kindle app, and do it before the rain knocked out my satellite internet. For most of the night we still had power, it was still on when my Mom eventually went to bed. I think the main part of the storm was still a little bit away from us. 

I come into the kitchen at some point and find a cute little frog:

I'm like your cute but you can't be in the house.  In the process of trying to herd the little thing out the door I scared the cats who bolted out the door and, thankfully, under the truck that was parked in front of the door. It took some coaxing and I think the can opener to get the furballs back to safety. 

At about 3 a.m. maybe we were plunged into darkness.With the power being out I had no way of knowing now where Helene was located. I don't do well in complete darkness so I turned on this string of butterfly lights I had and a battery powered lantern another of my great aunts had given us. This still didn't make me comfortable cause I could still see the dark living room. I don't know if I shut the privacy curtain to make myself comfortable, but either way I settled myself down with my tablet and proceeded to read the comics I got from the library... That's right I'm so nerdy I read comics in the middle of a topical storm. As I read through stories of zombies, vampires, Sherlock and Pumpkin Kings. The wind and rain howled outside. I hoped and prayed the tree outside my window wouldn't come crashing into my room, another reason I didn't want to sleep that night. So there I was on my bed reading trying to keep my anxiety at bay when in the silence of the de-powered dark my phone started buzzing. I looked at the screen it was the emergency signal telling everyone to get off the roads. I had a chill run through me, that's when I knew Helene had arrived. So I finished my nights vigil, I finished my comics and I moved on to a Twitches book. With the coming of the dawn there was still some wind whipping about. When it died down we looked at the damage.  We had a ditch made a little deeper and I imagine some broken limbs and down trees up in the woods. But near the house the biggest loss we had was my Dad's Zinnia's: 

We ended up making a bouquet out of the broken ones. Amazingly enough in a storm that caused so much damage, we somehow came out with minimal damage. After assessing the damage I got me some much needed sleep.

 September 28th

After spending day before reading, I had nothing else to do, and another dark night with no power, my mom feared for the food in our fridge and two deep freezers. So it was decided the 28th we'd head to town to get non perishables so if all our stuff went bad before the power came back on we'd have food. I was also hoping to find working WiFi somewhere to alert my friends and sister we were fine, and I was gonna charge the emergency charger in the truck as we drove that day. So as we left we saw below the house the tile we use to cross over the stream had clogged a bit sending the stream over the road, but it's little enough we could easily cross over it. As we got to the exit of our holler we saw a power line down in our holler adjacent neighbor's yard. As we went down the road we came across a downed tree across the road that luckily curved up into a high enough arch we could get the Tank through it, our 1999 Silverado F1-50.  

We stopped by the church cemetery to check to make sure my Dad's wreath hadn't blown away. Amazingly enough it was still standing just askew, I like to think it was my wreath securing skills, or the Grace of God. 

 

A Downed Tree 

 

We started going our normal route we and ran into the electric company as we started the decent to the riverside area that ran along the Pigeon River. We saw, and dodged rolls of hay, saw silt in the road and a farmer's trailer that'd been slammed into a building on the farm. And right passed it a giant tall bridge, that has weather many floods in it's long life, was ripped from it's banks taking some of the road with it:

 

As we traveled on we saw piles of mud on roads that had been cleared by locals who'd cleared it out with their machinery. This is why if the zombie apocalypse comes I know I'll be fine cause I'm surrounded by good ole country folk who got the things we need to survive, one of the two kinds of people you want having your back in times of trouble, the other my friend Captain says is inmates.

There was a woman we talked to on the side of the road who said she'd just been vacationing here in the mountains. Further along we saw the Pigeon had devastated the roads. 

We found ourselves facing another section of washed away road, leaving a narrow one lane to traverse. As my Mom was maneuvering these narrow passages, I'm was having a panic attack, knowing we're gonna have to come back this way.

 

Of course we came back sooner than we thought, because we eventually caught up to where the locals were clearing. It was a sea of impassable mud. Luckily we were told people were able to get out through the Fines Creek community. So we turned around and headed back the way we came.

We managed to get out Fines Creek way, there was a little concrete washed away but still passable. I just looked in awe that even Fines Creek caused so much damage on it's own, washing away river banks and personal bridges. Many small creeks in the area destroyed houses. 

 

 

So after that adventure we finally made it out of our little community on to 209. Our path eventually took us near the Pigeon again. We know a farmer who lost a large part of his river side fields because Helene redirected the river into half his field permanently.

 

Town was crazy with so much traffic, with lines at banks, and the grocery stores. It just shook me seeing all this. The destruction and the lines everywhere, this was things you saw in the news when tropic systems hit other places. I mean we're usually where people evacuate to in with storms!

We had to go through Frog Level which had so many stores damaged like Charlie's Corner here, they are just now at the time of this writing getting around to working on it. Frog Level has a mural of a frog sitting on a level the level shows how high got waters got there in a long ago storm, Helene matched it or possibly beat that based on the mud on the wall.

I went to Fangirl's Oma's house to see if they'd weathered the storm there since they had a modular home, but they hadn't. I was shocked to see flooding in these neighborhoods:

 Worried about Fangirl we decided to check on her. We got to her side of Canton through I-40. They were fine, and despite not having internet or power and she somehow had been messaging the Captain, who was fine and in limited contact with my sister who was OK, so I asked Fangirl to have Crystal tell my sibling we were fine. So with knowledge my siblings were good, and supplies we finally got home later than we planned. My Granny, who lives above us had been freaking out when we took her stuff to her. See my second cousin had been worried about us, so he hopped on his motorcycle, cause he figured it get around better with the destruction, and came down to the backwoods. He told Granny about the roads and she was fretting about us being on them specially since we were late getting back. See my Grandfather passed the year before and then when my Dad passed a few months later she's taken worrying over Mom and me.

So finally we were safe at home, night was falling so I grabbed a blanket and curled up on the couch intending to read some more Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce I'd been reading on. Shortly into the dark night our power came back on. Mom turned on the TV and found our satellite TV working. So I wondered hopefully did that meant my satellite internet was functional. It was, so I shot messages to my family and I think got to talk to my sister who could get on the WiFi at her partner's work building

 

The Days Following 

I used my internet to help people inquiring about relatives. If I had information that could help people I gave it to them, even encountered a woman seeking info about an area her aunt lived, turned out her aunt was my bus driver. I also saw all the judgement of people not understanding our surprising situation, wondering why we didn't do this and that. To those people I have choice words, but I'm a lady I won't say them, but I'm thinking them at you.  Even Julie Wunder, a former meteorologist turned blogger said in a post and I quote "... I was watching this storm, and I knew is was going to be bad. But never in a million years did I imagine it'd be this bad." Even weather people were thrown off guard by all this!

There was a lot of kindness too so much I think they had to tell people no more donations. Supernatural's Misha Collins, who'd been in Charlotte for the SPN Con, came out to areas in Asheville, Black Mountain, and Swannanoa. I was fangirling, and then feeling the warm fuzzies seeing him trying to help where he could.

My Nerdy Spaces: Geek Mountain and Morgan's Comics opened their doors to give people a reprieve from the surrounding Hell.

Our neighbors tag teamed to stopped up tile to get the water stopped on the road. 

 

I saw the devastation in Buncombe County next door with the River Arts District and Biltmore Village flooded. Towns practically whipped off the map. It broke my heart. Homes we constantly passed all my life eventually torn down due to flood damage... Not to mention hearing the death toll climb.

But we in WNC adopted the phrase WNCStrong. Because we may have been knocked down, but we didn't stay down, we came back roaring.

A Year Later

When I saw all damage I thought how are we going to fix this? How would we recover? But sitting here a year later I'm in awe what has been accomplished. The roads of the riverside area that I thought would require a miracle to fix, were rather quickly repaired and passable and a few months ago repaved. I'm slowly seeing neighbors repair and get back to normal. I joy in every triumph of a devastated business proclaiming they have reopened.

We've been strong and bounced back, we've not fully healed, but we are getting there.

The weather the last few days has reminded me of last year couple days of rain leading up to the 27th, and I'm hearing we may have a tropical system head our way, but nothing like Helene... I hope.

Have a good weekend friends, I thank you for reading much love!

*Thrifty Geek*