A Boxing Day survey of storm devastation off the beaten path
Ridgetops look like they’ve been bombed. Riverbeds are scoured, banks ripped open and lined with trash. Trees that once obscured the views are uprooted, toppled and lying in ranks. You’ve likely seen post-Helene images from western North Carolina. Many are of the River Arts District in Asheville and of devastation in nearby Swannanoa to the east. The Washington Post this week profiled Swannanoa flood victims from a row of mill houses left over from the days of the Beacon blanket factory, long gone.
A month ago, I told readers the region was out of the news but not out of the woods. That’s still true. Except on Boxing Day I surveyed some of the worst damage myself for the first time and came home stricken. The photos cannot convey the impact of the storm where news crews don’t go.
The bottom fell out of the sky on Sept. 25, two days before the remnants of Hurricane Helene even reached WNC. The rainfall was torrential and the ground saturation thorough. When the winds arrived on Friday morning, trees, big ones still in leaf, leaned over and fell everywhere in the city, shredding power lines and snapping power poles. Only more so did along exposed ridges. Picture the bomb damage in Gaza, only with trees instead of concrete. Where chainsaw crews cut downed trees off remote roadways, their carcasses line the highway for miles. When some agency will remove the debris, if ever, is anyone’s guess. Patching washed-out sections of roadway merits higher priority.
The winds hit hardest at elevation. Down below along waterways it was the flooding.
Along Paint Fork Rd. south of Barnardsville, flooding washed out culverts by the dozens. Fresh gravel drives covering shiny, new galvanized culverts lead to homes on the west side of the creek. In Barnardsville proper, flooding along Ivy Creek widened the streambed dramatically and left at least one destroyed bridge sitting in it downstream of where it once stood.
Forty-three died in Buncombe County alone, most from drowning, others killed by falling trees. In Swannanoa proper, where the Swannanoa River runs beside U.S. 70 in a low, flat valley, floodwaters spread out across a broad area and inundated homes and businesses. Much of the national news coverage you’ve seen focuses there.
But downstream and west of I-40 exit 59, the river loops north, west, and then south again. It flooded flat farmland before turning south and funneling itself into a narrow valley adjacent to the Botany Woods neighborhood. The waters rapidly filled the valley, tearing away vegetation and carrying away homes and residents.
I’d heard about the damage to this section of the county in October, but seeing it in person now that roads are serviceable again was shocking. Debris in some places hung in the trees 30 feet above the normal river level on Thursday. Trying to picture the scene was horrifying. Rain and wind now trigger survivors’ PTSD. It might be one of those internet “facts,” but more than a few here have told me we are among the few humans to witness a geologic event in their lifetimes.
So much Helene damage was never visible to national cameras. Flooding at PVC pipe manufacturer Silver-Line Plastics washed 10-ft lengths of pipe of various diameters downstream along the French Broad River north of Asheville. White plastic pipe hangs in the remaining trees lining the riverbanks for 30 or so miles like so much spaghetti.
“Silver-Line says it has hired a company to clean up the pipes,” Asheville Watchdog reports:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is often tasked with maintenance and debris removal in rivers. David Connelly, a spokesperson for the Corps, explained how the system works in these types of disasters.
“Obviously the Silver-Line Plastics debris is an issue and is definitely on the radar; however, it is just one part of the estimated 10,445,000 cubic yards of debris across 27 counties in Western North Carolina we are working on,” Connelly said via email.
Upstream inside Asheville city limits, storm debris washed down the Swannanoa is not going anywhere soon.
@wlos_news_13 Destruction from Hurricane Helene on Thompson Street in Asheville, N.C. #helene #heleneaftermath #asheville #ashevillenc #ashevillenorthcarolina #ashevilleflood #ashevillenctravel #news #newstory ♬ original sound – WLOS News 13
First priority goes to direct relief efforts to people who’ve lost homes, belongings, businesses and jobs. River cleanup is almost a tertiary effort, if I read the reporting right. Where counties and states cannot handle the cleanup tasks, FEMA tasks the Corps to help. But that could take months. Removal of downed trees in remote areas like I drove though on Thursday could take longer. Years maybe. Or never.
When election results rolled in on November 5, among our first thoughts here was federal relief will dry up under Trump 2.0. Already the Republican majority in Raleigh seems bent on cutting off state relief to devastated counties that shifted bluer. The continuing resolution passed in Washington a week ago provides “about $100 billion in aid for states stricken by hurricanes Helene and Milton, along with other disasters.” However, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) estimated in late October that North Carolina’s need alone tops $53 billion.