Georgia Patriot on Gab
Today was the first day that I attempted to make it into Asheville to work. I wanted to check on my store and my staff and see my coworkers and to get some much needed supplies. I am still out of power and water at my home in Marion. With hwy 40 East Bound closed I had to take back roads around it which included down close to lake Lure and Chimney Rock and then back up into Black Mountain and Swannanoa before finally into Asheville.
The normally 40 minute drive to work took the better part of two hours and in that time the things I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life. The lightest of things were down trees collapsed power lines. I drove over and under so many destroyed power lines it wasn’t even funny.
Then I got into areas where I was driving over cliffs and the edges of collapsed roads some of which had me wondering if I would even make it to Asheville alive or see my little girl again. On more than one occasion my car felt as if it were slipping off the road. The road was collapsed in many places and slid down the mountains and or into rivers below so much so that barely one car could make it through. I even had to drive through what used to be a stream which is now small river that had overtaken a bridge. It took me a while to get the courage to drive through it because I couldn’t see the bottom and wasn’t sure how deep it was or how safe it was to drive through. I had to wait on someone else obviously more familiar with the area to go through first for reassurance I could make it in my little Kia.
Then I began to see cars such as the one below and even houses and a couple of campers collapsed and or washed away down the mountains and the rivers. Not even just with trees fallen on them. They had completely been destroyed and taken away by the storm waters. I saw whole sides of mountains and rivers that had collapsed in giant mudslides more than one hundred feet high easily.
But that wasn’t the worst…
As I drove through several areas where the storm had hit the worst I saw bodies. Bodies of animals wild and domestic, and then..I saw human bodies who had gotten caught in the storms and the rivers. (No im not kidding or exaggerating) At first I thought they were Halloween decorations or just clothes or something but as I got closer I could see they weren’t,they were real. Real victims of Helene washed away by the storm. I saw their faces.
Words cannot describe how much I was affected by those sights. Even worse when I was able to get signal when finally getting into Asheville I called emergency to let them know about the victims, and was told they would get to them when they could but they were currently overwhelmed with calls similar in nature and the disaster response, and honestly they didn’t know if and when they would be able to get to them.
All of this was happening while on the radio which for Asheville has mostly become call ins a woman got on the call from Swannanoa to talk about the bodies she had seen floating down river and piling up.
I am horrified. I am not ok. Those two hours this morning completely changed me. It’s one thing to hear of these kinds of disasters and a complete other to see it, truly see it. I’ve seen posts of people trying to find their loved ones in all of this, and all I can think of now is..were some of those people I saw the loved ones they were searching for? What will happen to them? Could anyone have saved them? Did they have any warning? I am utterly heartbroken.
I’m sure my coworkers thought I lost my mind because I couldn’t really do much except stare off into space thinking about what I saw and or was in tears.
WNC was never prepared for what happened with this hurricane. I don’t know if there was a way to prepare for what happened, and now all I can say is if you have family in WNC and/or anywhere that was affected by this storm please help them, check on them, do what you have to.
Please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers. Please remember kindness in the face of this disaster.