Dade

Dade

An anonymous account of the days immediately following Tropical Storm Helene, and some of the long term effects on the area.

Come Hell or High Water Hotline

English

2 digital audio files

mp3

00:06:00

I am recording my experience, I bumped into this at New Belgium. Since I’ve been local, my family’s been local, I thought it would be worthwhile to plug in my experience. I am in North Asheville, in the Woodfin area, just outside city limits by a hair. I had a roommate at the time, so it was me and my roommate, we’re both about 27 and we are professionals working in downtown. The actual storm itself- we were very lucky because we didn’t lose more than one tree, however, our neighbor lost trees. And our neighbor lost a tree that blocked us off from being able to leave in our cars at all. It fell through the live wires at the time, so there was a tree blocking off anything in or out that we could not navigate, could not walk around, we had to climb the side of the mountain to get around it. We were also less than 1/10th of a mile away from the river, but we are up on the side of a hill. So, on the first day, I actually popped out of my bedroom and I chatted with my roommate. Because we had not been adequately made aware of the potential severity of the deal; my mom had called me and was like, “get water!” So I had about 6 days worth of water for myself, but my roommate didn’t have anything, didn’t even have, like, food, she had some cucumbers in the fridge and intended to go to the grocery store that weekend. We ended up spending about three days, completely trapped, unable to get in or out, outside of what we could walk to. When the phones went out, I was on the phone with my mom. My mom told me that they weren’t getting a lot of information out, but they knew it was bad. There was a point where we lost all contact, and when we lost all contact - because we’re pretty far out of town, we’re like 35 minutes, 45 minutes out of town- it was one of those things where I realized that if my girlfriend had not come to get me yet when that had happened and she couldn’t contact me, that the roads were gone. There was no internet, there was no ability for us to be able to text or call, like, we were just on our own. Really quickly food became an issue. I ended up splitting my water with my roommate, so my six days of water became three. We ended up having to cook, and I had some experience with backwoods camping, so we used my cast irons and we had a fire pit. I have chickens, so we were trading eggs with our neighbors to get information, and using my hybrid. I have a Honda with a hybrid battery - so we used the battery the first night to tune into the radio. That first night, that was before “I Heart Radio” had… …This is part two, this is [???] and I got cut off, the three minutes snuck up on me. The first night that we were able to get on the radio using our cars - using the hybrid battery - that was before “I Heart Radio” had taken over. “I Heart Radio” had what I assume are crisis trained who are able to do it. When it was just random, local MC’s, it was just people calling in, distraught. It was just absolutely horrible. That was scarring. We’re also right by the river, so we heard the helicopter flying over and over and over again. For the first three days it was just - what I know now, they were looking for people and taking news videos, but at the time it was just terrifying, not knowing what was happening, not knowing what was going on in or out. Our friend Chris Walcott, we call him “Cheese.” Cheese came and was able to get us and was like, “listen, we have one chance.” This on day four, he was like, “we have one chance to get you out, and it’s now. So, get what you can and go.” I had my dog and I put nine chickens in a laundry hamper, and we ended up heading down to - we drove down to South Carolina and my roommate drove out to Wilmington. We were gone for a long time. I was gone for two-and-a-half months because we didn’t have clean water and I couldn’t work. It’s February 21st now, and I was not able to get clean water at the house until February 10th because of our well and where we’re situated by the river. It took multiple tests, it was an absolute nightmare to get the water tested. A whole half of my family was out here. My grandpa was missing for a really long time. We found him, and everything was fine. My aunt, she lives downtown and was easily contacted. My cousin came out and brought us water - my cousin found dead people. Which, that’s crazy to me, because [Kat’s] a father, and just like a guy who works in restaurants, and he was lugging out water to people and found dead people. I do want to highlight the amount of community that happened because it wasn’t like your upper crust person who was doing stuff for us. It was the person who- it was always the person you didn’t expect looking out for us, which , I think, is really special. All in all, that being said, my family has been here since the 1910s, and everyone besides myself and my aunt have left. Fourteen households of my friends have left. They weren’t able to stay here, for either housing issues or work issues, so that’s been really interesting. I think this is going to change the nature of Asheville forever.