ASHEVILLE - We knew Helene was coming.
The staff at the Asheville Citizen Times started reporting on the rampage days before the first raindrop fell Sept. 27. But most of us thought the storm would take the usual track — it would smash into Florida’s Gulf Coast, as hurricanes do. Then Asheville and Western Carolina would get residual rains and winds, maybe knock down a few trees and power lines, as these mountain storms do.
I bought extra chocolate chip cookies, D batteries for my flashlight, filled a few bottles with water and settled down at home Thursday night, Sept. 26, to finish up work, as I do nightly.
At first I was happy to hear the pounding rain — my yard, newly planted blueberry bushes, arborvitae and azaleas — needed watering.
Then things took a dark turn.
The wind blew ferociously, the rain hammered harder and didn’t stop. Tree branches floated down my street. Friday morning my internet went out. Then the power. Then the faucets went dry.
My first thought — were my sister and her family, a couple miles down the road, OK? I had no cell service. Then: How would we put out the newspaper?
Before Helene hit, I had asked for one volunteer reporter to work the weekend shift. With the rain still pelting and the French Broad River dangerously rising, Asheville Citizen Times staffers went into the storm, taking cell phone photos and dispatching reports from the field. When I got to our downtown office Friday, news editor Aaron Nelsen and five reporters — almost our entire newsroom — were already there.
Our county watchdog reporter Jacob Biba, a father of two young children, raced to pick up city government reporter Sarah Honosky and growth and development reporter Will Hofmann, whose cars were trapped by toppled trees. High school sports reporter Evan Gerike and Black Mountain News reporter Karrigan Monk also found their way to the office, which was (and still is) without water or air conditioning, but had power and Wi-Fi.
Knowing that our veteran — and only — staff photographer, Angela Wilhelm, was in a far-away location on vacation, freelance photographer Josh Bell chain-sawed a massive tree out of his driveway and called to tell me he had our backs.
None of our staff had natural disaster training. But as daily newspaper journalists, our instincts went to work: go into the storm, get out vital information to our community — school and road closures, areas of dangerous flooding, evacuation warnings and places to safely ride out the storm. We were documenting, unknowingly, the worst natural disaster in Western North Carolina and in our lifetimes.
None of us had power, water, Wi-Fi or cell service in our homes. Our office — our operation command center — is tiny, has no windows that open, no flushing toilets, no hand washing, but an abundance of sweat, body odor and muddy boots.
Businesses, restaurants and hotels shuttered. With no power, credit cards and ATMs were useless. My staff had no drinking water. I gave Evan my last $20 to find us some. He came back with five bottles — a hotel charged him $4 a pop.
There hasn’t been a day since Helene hit that we haven’t been in the office, working the emails and phones, out in our neighborhoods where record-high rainfall and rivers savagely swept away trees, power lines, roads, bridges, homes, hope and human lives.
The enormity of our collective loss is still a shock, as we visit emergency shelters and our city’s poorest neighborhoods, trek through the flood waters and mud of the River Arts District, Swannanoa and Biltmore Village, Burnsville and Marshall, Boone and Buck Creek.
As the paper’s editor, I need to stay close to home base, with only quick walks around downtown. But I can still grasp the fear and the loss. Our reporters came in from the many towns and devastated areas, exhausted, emotionally drained from reporting on the homes swept away, the people desperately searching for loved ones they could not find.
On my daily forages for a "porta potty" that’s not overflowing, I meet our community members.
Leon, a Vietnam Veteran who was living in the Veterans Restoration Quarters in East Asheville when he was suddenly evacuated due to flooding. He traveled first to Harrah’s Cherokee Center, then to A-B Tech, and then he left the cramped quarters for the streets.
Carter James and his co-owners of Flour in the S&W Building selflessly — the eatery is closed indefinitely without water — spread out coffee and hot biscuits, pasta and salad, bottled water and a smile for whoever came by, no questions asked, no money expected. Their friends trucked in food from Charlotte.
I bumped into my old friend, Will Harlan, and his wife, Emily. They looked drained. Their Barnardsville farm flooded away — but not before Will saved their goats and chickens, sheltering with the animals in their home. They were downtown searching for cell service to start the long process of insurance claims.
Kendra and her family of six children, from ages 3-17, from West Asheville, searched downtown for help — drinking water and food for her kids, who are out of school until who knows when, and need a place to play and find Wi-Fi, as children need to do. No water, power or internet at home. She starts each day at 6:30 a.m. to find the places distributing food.
“It’s extremely hard,” she told me about the storm’s aftermath. “Getting (the children) bathed is the hardest thing. They want to play outside because there’s nothing else to do and then it’s hard to get them clean. Our stove don’t work. We ran out of charcoal. We’ve done a lot of foraging in the woods to find wood to burn.”
I asked one of her daughters, age 9, what she missed since the storm. “I miss Asheville. Ever since the storm it feels different,” she said. “I miss Christmas.”
Sitting outside filthy, overflowing porta potties one afternoon, gathering strength to go back in there to relieve my knotted-up stomach cramps, I chatted with two women — they told me they were lifelong friends — now living in the Vanderbilt Apartments. Each walked with a cane. They had ventured out of their waterless homes to get a free hot meal.
One opened the porta potty door, saw the sewage on the seat and floor and said she couldn’t do it. I asked where she would go to the bathroom.
“They bring us diapers to wear, so we’re fine.”
I decided day that I wouldn’t stress over my sauna of an office, my grimy skin and unwashed hair, or the 15-17-hour workdays. I was so lucky to have my house still standing, my loved ones safe and legs strong enough to squat somewhere, without the need for diapers.
After multiple nights working well past dark, I finally saw my backyard in the daylight. The arborvitae had not bent or broken, the blueberry bushes turning a fall blush of red, and my azaleas danced in purplish-pink blossoms.
Karen Chávez is the executive editor of the Asheville Citizen Times and the Hendersonville Times-News. Email her at KChavez@citizentimes.com
