HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina — Two months to the day after the remains of Hurricane Helene brought unprecedented devastation into the mountains of North Carolina, the remarkable damage is still plain to see. So, too, though, is the good old American pluck.
On a steep curve a few miles up Finley Cove Road, to the west and above Hendersonville proper, half the road remains collapsed in a mangle of rocks, dirt, steel, wires, and asphalt. All the way up and down the road, new vistas present themselves via open spaces where trees by the thousands have fallen. At the bottom of the hill, where otherwise unremarkable Mud Creek turned into a raging torrent, a large grocery store, bank, and other businesses remain shuttered due to flood damage behind “Keep Out” wire fencing, with reopenings not expected until the new year. Around the bend, ruined trailer homes remain surrounded by heaps of flotsam, a testament to Helene’s human toll.
Not too far away, however, the five main blocks of happy, historic Main Street are bustling with Christmas shoppers, almost everyone in a good mood, with no storm damage in sight. On the same block as the high-end boutique, the second-hand thrift shop, with proceeds going to hospice care, fits right in with the busy bakery and with a store full of mountain whimsy. The large statue of a black bear, emblematic of what essentially is the town mascot, stands watch over the pedestrian traffic.
Twenty-six miles to the north, a perfect marathon distance, the entirety of Asheville’s famed Biltmore Village remains barricaded off, all its storefronts boarded up, dehumidifying vacuum tubes jutting out from covered windows, and a huge heap of trash and downed vegetation in the parking lot of what otherwise would be perhaps the most chichi McDonald’s imaginable. The Swannanoa River left its mark.
Two miles farther up (or, rather, up and then back down again), the once thriving bohemian River Arts District, hard by the French Broad River, is now a wasteland of empty brick buildings with unimaginably elevated watermarks — and, in the industrial section around the bend, a jumble of sheer and utter ruin.
Still, in signs of life and hope, some lots are entirely cleared, with heavy equipment being moved around in obvious preparation for rebuilding.
Such is the stark juxtaposition of highs and lows (both literal and figurative) in a region showing admirable resilience after tornadoes and epic rainfall, resulting in the highest river levels in recorded history, 103 deaths, and more than 879,000 customers without power for up to two weeks. As reported here before, both government and private assistance after the storm was voluminous, with gratitude aplenty for the aid.
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Then again, as is oft the case with government services, there obviously were glitches along the way. Two days before Thanksgiving, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) reported to his constituents that “FEMA’s response was in some ways effective and how, in other ways, there were significant issues that need to be addressed. For example, on Day Three after the storm, FEMA announced it had delivered 400 pallets of desperately needed water to Western North Carolina, but when asked where those supplies had been delivered, FEMA could not provide a single location.”
Irony of ironies: After the flood, they couldn’t find the water. Yet what was evident in abundance was a tide of persistence, with no ebb in sight.