Report from the Climate Change front line: Mud, grief, perseverance in wake of Hurricane Helene

By Katey Schultz

Sun contributor

It’s hard to prioritize writing in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, while my small community of Celo, North Carolina—an hour by car from Asheville—is still knee-deep in mud, grief, and destruction. But we’re also heart-deep in resourcefulness, compassion, and perseverance. What could one resident of rural Yancey County have to say to the residents of Leelanau County, nearly 1,000 miles away?

Having spent part of 13 summers in upper northwest Michigan, and a few winters too, I know a close-knit, take-care-of-your-people kind of place. It’s the kind of place I come from, and it’s the kind of place I believe might actually listen if I say there is one thing you can do today that has nothing to do with dollars, blankets, or water, that will help you survive in the aftermath of a disaster.

Talk to your neighbors. Yes, the ones you already know. And yes, the ones with the political signs in their yards that don’t match yours. These are the people whose survival you will depend upon, and these are the people you will most immediately be able to help.

To be clear: having supplies to shelter in place and to evacuate, is essential. But following our collective trauma from Helene, a parallel set of needs arose alongside the immediate needs for food, water, shelter, and medical treatment. These were not things you could put inside your “go bag.” These were things you can start doing now, and model for future generations, creating an impact farther than you’ll ever know. It might require an imaginative leap to believe that a simple “Hello” or conversation between two people who share a property line could actually make a difference. But that is precisely what happened.

I’m not the only person trying to convince others that neighborly relations can save lives. In fact, the city government of Edmonton, Alberta, has created a 16-page guidebook called Neighboring for Climate Change, and made it publicly available for free.

How Helene formed, where it landed, and why it did what it did were an unnatural disaster exacerbated by Climate Change. We are all a part of the causes and conditions of that disaster. This is everyone’s crisis. When it’s your turn, will you be ready to put your lives in your neighbor’s hands? Will you be prepared to save theirs? In no particular order, here are a few snapshots of what people in my area experienced in the aftermath of Helene:

• K- and N- run a small bed and breakfast adjacent to the river in Celo. Their guest cottage washed away in the flood, and the inn itself was flooded to the ceiling on the first floor.
• A five-minute walk from our house, my son’s best friends’ beautiful home was flooded. The family of 8 (six kids, two adults—plus four dogs, two cats, and two batches of kittens) had already relocated to the small guest house farther up their yard, but around 6:30 am on Friday, Sept. 27, they realized that wasn’t enough. They piled into their vehicle and drove up the hill in their own yard, screaming to get the animals to follow. The creek ripped through their pool, tore into their house (there is a log in their kitchen and a sinkhole in the tiles), whisked their 15-passenger van more than 400 feet downstream, and obliterated the homestead they’ve built there for the past 10 years. All family members and most pets survived.
• The entire S-family, who moved to the South Toe River Valley about a year ago to escape the war in Ukraine, went missing after the storm. There is no trace of where their home once sat. They lived along the river near Patience Park and the mother, father and grandmother are now confirmed dead.
• An engaged couple with two young children that I used to see at our local Farmer’s Market, tried to evacuate Green Mountain, NC, during the storm. They did not succeed.
• G- and N-, who run a small farm a stone’s throw from our house, didn’t lose their house but their farmland completely washed away. Floodwaters pushed their barn into the middle of the road, and it had to be demoed with excavators so traffic could pass; their gargantuan steel greenhouses are ripped apart and washed away; their 15-passenger van is on its side in the ditch a hundred feet from where it usually sits.
• Half a mile from our road, five houses either washed away or were destroyed. K-, a wise matriarch in our community, had to evacuate suddenly with her dog. She locked her cat in her bedroom for safety. But the house upriver from hers swept off its foundation, crashed into hers, and sheared off part of her house, including the bedroom. Several days later the cat returned!
• Toe River Crafts and the Ten Thousand Things food co-op were located on the west side of Highway 80, at least 100 yards from the river. They had never flooded before. Now both are gone. Only a few foundation blocks remain.
• S- and J- live a couple of miles south. Their lovely ranch style house was by the river near Mt. Mitchell golf course. Most of it washed away, and they were evacuated via Army helicopter four days after the storm.
• J- was living in a small rental home between Poplar Grove and Micaville. The morning of the storm she was eating breakfast and decided to move her car to a safer location. Twenty minutes later, an enormous landslide began on what used to be a pasture above her home (you can guess what happened to the animals). The mud and trees knocked her house off its foundation and into her car, which likely prevented the house and J- from sliding farther down the mountain. Neighbors crawled across the landslide to help get J- and her cat out of her house. She is now living temporarily in a different neighbor’s house, because those neighbors evacuated after the storm to Alabama. Their kids started a new school and the parents now have Internet access, so the family can maintain their income (both adults work remotely). They are living with family until the infrastructure in Celo is restored and school reopens.
• My brother-in-law works at an area hospital that has been inundated with patients (since the Erwin hospital was flooded and patients had to ride out the storm on the roof until the wind slowed down enough for them to be evacuated by helicopter). Last week, he spoke to four survivors who were rescued after the storm. Two had scrambled up a hill of debris and survived, but were too elderly and weak to climb back down. They sat on the pile of debris for days until the helicopter came. Two others were in their home when the river took it; their story is likewise shocking and miraculous.
• IW, who is a member of the elder care network in which my parents are involved, lives in Micaville. Although her house is elevated, the creek near the road destroyed her car and flooded her house. She had to grab her cat in the night and go up a bank in a neighbor’s yard to escape the raging flood. She said she was staying, likely because she doesn’t have any other place to go.

Katey Schultz is the author of Flashes of War and Still Come Home, both published by Loyola University Maryland. She and her son evacuated from Celo, NC, five days after Helene, and her husband remained in Celo to continue working at the regional walk-in clinic.