A RAW View from Asheville
by Jacksonville's Robert Arleigh White
After making landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday, September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene moved rapidly toward Western North Carolina, stopping over Asheville located roughly 500 miles from where Helene made landfall.
Robert Arleigh White, RAW Talk writer and actor, experienced first-hand Hurricane Helene’s devastating visit to Asheville. Initially without power, Internet, and water, Bob White recounts the early hours and days following Helene’s visit. Two weeks after Helene’s historic flooding devastated Western North Carolina, White remains without running water. He’s told it will be restored in time for Thanksgiving.
Some Guy Says, by Robert Arleigh White
Some Guy says, “I don’t think anyone knows how big this thing was.”
And that’s probably true.
September 25–28, 2024: Wednesday—Saturday
The problem, part of it anyway, is that an immense rainy weather system hit our area on Wednesday, September 25—two days before Helene got here. That’s when the flooding was the worst on my street. Two days ahead of the storm. By the time Helene hit, the ground was already saturated.
On Friday, September 27, we lost power and water. Fine. To be expected. In the middle of a call with Canetha, I lost cell and Internet.
I think this will blow over quickly.
It does not.
Saturday morning, I realize I don’t have any water for Bella the Dog. Later in the day, an evacuating neighbor brings me all of her potable water.
It’s really dark.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
I pick up my phone, and I have cell and Internet! Sort of. It’s intermittent connectivity, but I’m so happy—I didn’t realize how hard it has been to be so isolated over the course of only two days.
As we come more and more online, I cannot tell you how much your messages of encouragement and love mean. They are powerful, and they give us strength.
And we need that right now.
The other part of getting back online is seeing more and more and more what we are actually living with and among—the things you have known while we have been shut down and isolated—and how much there is to get through before we can even begin to do the work of putting Western North Carolina back together.
Almost immediately, we experience news as a kind of filter of total devastation and catastrophe through which we start to see everything else. We go looking for trouble.
On the other hand, I’m lucky.
From the exact spot where I am sitting and writing to you, things look pretty much like they always have. I am so grateful.
But one block in any direction reveals an extraordinary range of destruction. The losses here—houses, cars, pets, people—are extraordinary and the stories that accompany them are heart-wrenching.
In Montford, the neighborhood where I live, giant trees are ripped right out of the earth and pitched into the most stately and impervious of homes. Cars and trucks are smashed flat. Roads that I travel every week have slipped into the water and slid down the mountain. Lake Lure looks like a lake of logs, like you could walk across it. Friends are stranded in places that have sheltered me and my tribe for decades.
We hear stories of people swept away by walls of crashing water. Some of them are found pitched up into some high, still standing tree or wedged into collapsed limbs or hidden under debris of roads, rocks and fractured houses and homes. Some folks are never seen again.
Just up the road, a home’s foundation is swept away in a mudslide, and the house itself is now perched on the root ball of an upturned tree.
I’m really hungry. A neighbor comes over to the car where I am charging my phone, trying to get updates. She hands me an apple and a bottle of water. I am in tears.
Monday, September 30, 2024
I stand in a food line today—the World Central Kitchen—a first for me.
The World Central Kitchen is an outstanding organization. They hand you two packs—a starch and a protein. The line never stops moving. I barely have time to say Thank You, before they’re helping the next person. I get chicken tenders and mac-and-cheese.
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
I’m very lucky. I’ve found temporary refuge with Ginny outside of Brevard. It’s about 40 minutes away from town. I take supplies back to Asheville—5-gallon jugs full of drinking water.
Power is mostly on—but not in my building. Everyone around us seems to have it, and some of the residents here are beginning to take this personally. It’s getting tense.
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Ironically, it’s the water that has ruined this place and threatens our future the most. But it’s water we most need.
Four water stations serve Asheville. Three were obliterated and one is inaccessible. Water pipes all over the area were just blown out by the sheer force of the crashing floods.
We had been told it will be a month before we would have running water again. Now the City is saying Thanksgiving.
Thursday, October 3, 2024
My day generally breaks out like this:
Wake up at 4:30 a.m.
Make a list of things I am grateful for
Walk Bella
Figure a plan for food
Execute plan
Sit in the car and get updates and charge phone
Meet neighbors at the creek with buckets to fetch water for flushing. It’s all very Laura Ingalls Wilder
Walk around
Try to be useful and encouraging
Sit in car and get updates. I have a full tank of gas, so folks gather round to charge their phones
Daily 5 p.m. check in with neighbors in the parking lot
Read and wait for dark
Walk Bella after 7:30 p.m. curfew—makes me feel subversive and powerful
Go to bed
Friday, October 4, 2024
Everywhere I go, I say to everyone I see, “Are you ok?” Most people look up and flash a quick smile or maybe just a little hint of sparkle. Sometimes they shrug or grunt before they shuffle off.
Today, I ask a man if he is ok. He just bursts into tears. I hold him for a long time. He collects himself, he wipes his eyes, nods his head, and walks away. There are no words.
If I see someone I know, my second question is always, “What’s your plan to vote?” This pisses some people off.
Some Guy says, “Don’t you think we need to be more concerned about evacuations right now?” Some Guy says, “I need to find water.” I don’t care. I keep asking. Everyone needs a plan to vote. I wonder about people in Bat Cave and Chimney Rock and Black Mountain and Gerton and Swananoa and the places that have been destroyed or erased. The folks who are left—what are they going to do? I am sure the powers that be aren’t going to make this easy.
What’s your plan?
Saturday, October 5, 2024
One week later, it’s a very different landscape. The people here, in real defiance of all that was lost, have come together to make their own answers, to shed their own light, and to change the narrative as best they can.
Changing the narrative of destruction means making things seem and feel normal again.
Asheville’s downtown restaurants are cooking up food and distributing it for free. They accept your donations of food and either cook it for you before it goes bad or hand it out to folks at no charge.
Bottled water is now easy to find. There is a boil alert for everything else.
Musicians gather together in impromptu configurations and play on the street corner. People stop strangers to share stories of loss or heroism or words of encouragement and offers of help. There is great good cheer when you hear from someone who hasn’t been able to post or, better yet, when you bump into them on the street. It can feel like a festival.
The Little Jumbo, the speakeasy located right outside my bedroom window, is open from 2 to 5. Because there is no running water, it’s a bring your own cup situation. They have music. It’s a much-needed gathering place, and it feels good.
But it’s still dark and weird for sure.
Some Guy Says
Most of our news still comes from stumbling around on the street and hearing from Some Guy.
Some Guy says, “There are fights breaking out at all the gas stations.” I haven’t seen any. “You can’t get into the grocery store.” I did. “Hey! They’ve got free WiFi” . . . at some bogus place. I walked all over town trying to find free WiFi. Days passed, and then I did.
Some Guy said the big box stores on Tunnel Road have all been looted because the police are busy with rescue and recovery. Some Guy told me today that there are no guns in Walmart. They’ve all been looted. “You better get ready for that!”
On the news, right this minute, Some Guy is saying, “I hear that the city’s water stockpile was compromised before the storm.” What does that even mean?
There is a curfew from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. My neighbor Kevin—not Just Some Guy—just told me that, even so, he got in the long line at the Harris Teeter at 6:00 a.m. this morning. The store opens at 8. He decided to abandon his place in the line because the hostility was too much. “People started cussing and hollering. You wouldn’t believe it, Bob. And then it got down into all that political shit, right and left. I’d rather starve.”
So yeah, there is that.
Later on, I stand in that line to get into that same store. The capacity has been set at 50. Five people are allowed in at a time. At the entryway, a lady is handing out lollipops and a smile. I decide I want to be her one day.
More is coming. This isn’t over. It gets better and harder every day, and there are lots of hard days ahead.
Please do not forget about us.
White is well-known to Jacksonville, having served as CEO of the Cultural Council and Jacksonville Theater, and as a Duval county public school teacher. He migrated to Asheville from Jacksonville two years ago, as do so many locals who call Western North Carolina their home away from home, where he experienced Hurricane Helene’s devastation and Asheville’s on-going recovery efforts first-hand.
https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/rapid-reaction-historic-flooding-follows-helene-in-western-nc/
Bob, you are a poet, in both darkness and light. You are a hero to many people, but we forget to tell you.
You are.
Thank you.
Sherry - thank you so much for keeping us apprised of Bob.
How do we send him a letter - address or email?
My friend of 45 years has lived on St. Simons Island for 50 years and was at his NC cabin for Helene - he had to go to the mountains to experience the worse hurricane impacts he has experienced and he lives on a Barrier Island - what irony. Yes - Climate Change is real.
Thank you very much - Rick