Living With Helene

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Last week, Vanessa wrote a Deep Dive listing ways to help those impacted by Hurricane Helene. She was responding to a timely crisis and covering my assigned send, which I wasn’t able to finish because I live in Asheville, North Carolina. On Friday, September 27th, my husband and I woke up at six in the morning to feed our nine-month-olds. Almost to the minute after we finished our power went out.

We had known Helene was predicted to peak in those early morning hours, and we had expected a power outage. Our street is lined with old trees and any gusty day is liable to fell a branch that takes out a line. We waited for the alert that would tell us when power would return, not realizing that it wouldn’t return that day, or the next, or the next—not realizing that our city was flooding, transforming beyond recognition, and unable to witness the incomprehensible scale of loss and destruction.

I’m writing on Thursday, October 10th. We have power and spotty internet, the snag of a hollowed dogwood downed by the wind, and a musty carpet from basement flooding. We don’t have running water and don’t know when we will. We are among the luckiest.

I had a draft of cozy reading essentials saved for my next post, and I’ll get back to that when coziness feels more accessible, but I decided to take a moment here to make an attempt at articulating my experience, which I’ve been struggling to do. Books are mentioned, but you’ll find no bookish angle here. This is just me, sharing about that week I unexpectedly couldn’t show up to work at Book Riot because I was cut off from power and internet, but also learning to exist after a natural disaster and grieving with my city. I spent that week learning how to live in uncertainty, without water, power, or information about what was happening just down the road.

That Friday, the first day of life after Helene, my husband and I texted our bosses to let them know we likely wouldn’t be able to sign on that day. We’d received city and utility alerts in the lead-up to the hurricane and figured we’d need to conserve cell power because the outage could be longer than usual. Brian spent much of the day mitigating the water pouring from the unfinished basement into the room downstairs while I watched our kids and inventoried our supplies.

Mid-way through the day, we lost cell signal entirely, our bars transforming into an “SOS.” Only city alerts came through and we received a system pressure and boil water advisory. We had filled the giant water canteen we use for camping in anticipation of a water outage, but now that we knew it was almost certainly impending, we worked on filling empty containers and the bathtub with enough water to last a couple days. At some point, Brian shouted and I ran into the kitchen. Our “Halloween tree,” an old, termite-infested dogwood with a gaping hole that looked like a mouth, had fallen onto the roof of our covered car park.

Nobody was going outside in that weather to deal with the tree, so we expanded the girls’ play area into the main living room and hung out with them all day, reading board books in cheerful hues and giving them an abundance of attention. Now, knowing what I know, having heard stories from locals and neighbors, I wrestle with survivor’s guilt looking back at our cozy scene. That night deeper uncertainty crept in, but we mulled cider over the camp stove and read short stories aloud to entertain ourselves after the girls went to bed. Still lacking service, alarmed texts from friends and family who saw the River Arts District submerged in the floodwaters of the French Broad River only five miles away from us went unanswered.

We had a planned three-day vacation starting Saturday. A room was waiting for us at a resort on Hilton Head Island where we hoped to pamper ourselves in a way we rarely did or could. We saw it as one last opportunity to enjoy the summer and ease the landing of our first gratifying but exhausting year as first-time parents with full-time jobs. My sister- and brother-in-law were driving up with their two boys to meet us. We’d lost contact with them but hoped we’d still see them there. Ignorant of the aftermath, we packed up the van and the girls, hoping we’d come back on Monday to water and power. But our car slowed as we saw a fallen power line down the road. One of few radio stations broadcasting local news played softly in the background, and we tried to listen as we watched cars line up at gas stations with dark signs and closed doors. We stopped at the last station before the highway, joining a convoy of waiting travelers, and turned the radio up. We headed back home.

I turned on the tap to fill a giant pot we normally use for seafood boils and holiday canning and my heart sank as the water narrowed to a trickle. We were trapped with no answers as to when or how we’d get water. We had learned that the city was asking people to stay off the roads for safety and so emergency vehicles could access areas in need. I drove the farthest I have since before Helene just yesterday—a three-mile drive to a grocery store—a couple miles short of the distance to my favorite local winery, now nothing more than a pile of rubble amidst the ruined stretch of the River Arts District. The weekend before Helene, I had taken the girls on my first solo walk with them along the RAD’s now-lost greenway.

Our neighbor, an independent octogenarian, was our main source of information during the days that followed. She learned a lot from her battery-operated AM/FM radio and our neighborhood’s longtime residents. Through the news she brought us, we began to realize the magnitude of the damage left in Helene’s wake. We started to take turns—one of us sitting in the car while the other watched the girls—listening to the twice-daily broadcasts where local and federal officials, utility reps, and the like reported updates and necessary information. I continue to drop what I’m doing if I can to watch the broadcast and make sure we’re up to date on where to get potable and nonpotable water, to learn about what’s happening across the county and in neighboring communities, and to hold my breath hoping for a timeline for running water, unable to wrap my head around the impossible task of rebuilding massive pipelines that suffered catastrophic damage. It’s hardly hyperbole to say the city will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

These days, my standard response to how I’m doing is to say, “We’re taking it day by day and there are a lot of helpers on these streets.” I type it almost robotically now, but it’s true. When I do venture off the island of the seemingly undisturbed hill I live on, I see restaurant staff at Regina’s on Patton standing in front of grills, handing out hot meals, I see people congregating in front of Firestorm Books sharing information and resources, I see us making room for each other at West Asheville Library where there’s accessible WiFi because power and signal haven’t returned to us all. I go on errands only partially because we need to restock after losing most of our perishables to the power outage.

On Sunday, with stable if glacial internet at last, I continued to update myself on what had happened. I had been in survival mode all week, taking pains to smile and stay upbeat for the girls and for myself—to avoid the pain if I’m being honest. But that day I read a story about a family that broke me and I cried at last. The sorrow sneaks up on me at random points throughout the day, every day. It hits me hardest when unbidden thoughts of the people who didn’t know their days would end so nightmarishly with Helene appear from thin air. I can’t help but take those losses personally.

One night, after we put the girls in their cribs, Brian and I talked about the long road ahead and what it means to put down roots and raise our children in a city with an uncertain future. We visited Asheville for the first time a few years ago and decided in a matter of days that this was where we wanted to start the next chapter of our lives. We sensed that the city was discovering something new and exciting about itself, and we fell in love with the natural landscape and the people. This past year especially, after we brought our girls into the world, we fantasized out loud about hinted plans for more greenways. We looked forward to more pedestrian and bike access and took pride in the city’s established culinary, arts, and music scene. Now we worry that resources will be exhausted to get back to baseline, that as attention moves away from us, so too will assistance, and that the people who make this city so vibrant and are its beating heart will suffer in the long term or be forced to relocate.

While our daughters will never know the Asheville we fell in love with, the community is still here, engaged in and ready for the work of rebuilding. Here’s to the memory of those lost and to finding solid ground beneath the wreckage of Helene. May we discover something strong and lasting there.

Buncombe County is currently directing Hurricane Helene relief donations to Bounty & Soul and United Way, if you’re so inclined.