Five Days in the Wake of Helene
Notes from My Journal
Dear Friends,
As I write this letter, helicopters continue charting course overhead on continued rescue efforts as bodies continue to be found and supplies continue to be shuttled to difficult-to-access communities in need. The impulse is strong to say something meaningful in the wake of Helene. Stronger still is the recognition to resist making meaning where meaning is not yet made.
I did begin recording notes on Day #1. Perhaps these jots from my journal from Days 1 through 5 lend a glimpse of moments lived by those of us privileged enough to have escaped the worst of the battering. Survivor’s remorse nearly keeps me from sharing.
I cannot write firsthand about losing a loved one or watching my home wash away in a bloated river or down the side of a mountain in a mudslide. I have nothing to say about my living room being bisected by an ancient oak tree, nor about the tree leaving life, lying prostrate, hollow in the middle, taking however long it takes a tree to die when it is snapped in half in gale-force winds. I have not lived these calamities. I somehow seem always to be steps away. Until I am not and death takes me, too, when it comes. But death by drowning in a river furor seems an especially merciless horror.
All of this is to say that perhaps putting words to the page of seeing, hearing, doing, not doing, of wondering and feeling, serves some purpose. I do not know. But I am quite certain that meaning-making is not any of ours to do alone.
You may wonder why no images. I assume you have seen more on the news than I can show you, much of which, were I to try, is cordoned off here and we cannot get to. On Day #1, it did seem natural to take photographs, but everywhere my eye landed was on a dying tree. It felt heartless to the beingness of the tree to take an image, not unlike it would feel to photograph a human body thrown by the current downstream, and so, I stopped.
Perhaps the missing images symbolize the felt absence of countless human and other-than-human lives here and everywhere there is devastation today.
Please note that some of these notes are disturbing.
In closing, I am slowly responding to your emails and yet to respond to your comments from last week. This is for no other reason than that, but for this letter, which has not been easy, words seem to be taking leave from me for a bit. I count this as a blessing.
In gratitude and with love,
Renée
22 September
Final passage in my journal before arrival of Helene
~ “If, then, there is any one generalization to be made for any and every soul, the soul will be the primary act of a physical bodily organism.”1
28 September
Saturday, post-Helene, Day #1
This climate event is life-changing in as yet untold ways.
On Wednesday morning, 25 September, I woke with the sense, unexplainable, that I should move to higher ground. [I was twenty feet from the bank of the French Broad River.]
[I text decades-long friend, T, and ask to locate to her driveway late afternoon.]
[A little after 4 pm, Wednesday] The sky opened. It rained as I have never seen/heard/experienced rain.
A sense of foreboding. I begin to understand that the first storm system is setting the stage for the next and the [100-year] flood I now hear they predict. I begin to understand the hurricane [in the Gulf] is the next system.
Things feel weird.
[Thursday evening, steady stream of texts with family, loved ones] . . . K [grad school roommate, recently relocated here] writes, This is INSANE.
Helene is still out in the Gulf, hundreds of miles from here; hasn’t reached Tampa. The rain is unrelenting.
Thursday Night into Friday, Helene.
Thursday ~11 pm, D [son] calls, wondering if I should get out of the van. Don’t wait too long, Mom. T texts. If shit gets scary, please leave her. We will find a way to get you a new home. I don’t want to be without you. The world needs you in it. T and I relocate the van to a hotel parking lot. I ride out the storm from her living room watching trees fold, bend, break.
The sound of a tree when it breaks.
Friday morning, early, text exchange with Mary. Images of trees draped over her car. It’s like a tree graveyard up here. I’m so glad you didn’t come up here and glad you are at T’s.2
M [son] telephones. Says he is OK. He has spoken with D [son]. We are cut off when water, power, cell service go down.
Late afternoon Friday, [T and I] walk a block; passage in every direction forbidden by downed trees.
7:30 am – 7:30 pm curfew
Saturday morning, T and I learn that some roads have been cleared. Neither of us has cash, little food between us, seven gallons of water in the van’s fresh water tank, and forty available miles of diesel fuel in van; a tree limb smashed through the windshield of T’s car. We decide to drive the van the three miles downtown, stopping by the home of [sons’ father and stepmother] to check in on them. They happen to have cash; she hands me $100.
Where the roads are cleared of trees, there are countless snapped and low-hanging power lines, too low for the van to pass under in most places.
We reach Biltmore Avenue, see a crowd outside the Moxy Hotel on high ground, glass shattered from the windows above, awnings downed on sidewalks, debris scattered beyond the lines of sight. We learn there is weak wifi at Moxy. I manage to get texts out to D, C, M [two sons in Asheville, one in Portugal] and one to K with my whereabouts.
I put the phone down. M [son] taps on the window. I swallow hard, get out of the van. You ok, Mom? A hug. Yes. I am. Are you? He did not see my text.
Shows me videos he took of the early stages of the French Broad rising, the flooding. I will forever wonder how we happened to be at the same place at that very particular same time.
The co-op is open. We buy food to feed.
29 September
Sunday, post-Helene Day #2
A friend arrives with buckets of water in the back of her truck from a spring on her property.
A friend arrives with gasoline and diesel fuel.
T lines a bucket in the backyard to use as a temporary toilet. I have a compost toilet in the van. What do residents downtown do?
I walk hour and a half to Montford [former neighborhood], crawling over and under downed trees. Check on neighbors and loved ones. Manage to send three texts standing outside the Visitor’s Center.
The sky is filled with helicopters.
K arrives.
T’s place becomes a hub for meals, water, news. E, who brought the water, makes soup.
Begin to triage food based on what will go bad first. The van fridge cannot accommodate all that is in T’s and neighbors’ fridges and freezers.
I-40 from the east [where there was a landslide] is passable in one lane for the National Guard.
Friends and neighbors begin to leave by the only open artery, southbound on 1-26.
30 September
Monday, post-Helene Day #3
[no notes]
1 October
Tuesday, post-Helene Day #4
We empty T’s freezer and fridge, place what will fit into the van fridge [solar powered]. Make soup.
Generators sound at some neighbors’ homes.
Word of people believing they are smelling gas leaks. Sheriff’s Patrol says it is the smell of bodies.
Word that they’re running out of body bags.
Word of >1000 more still unaccounted for.
Word of Mission Hospital setting up a temporary morgue.
Word of someone shot and killed over food access in grocery-store parking lot.
Word of water trucks and food coming in from the south; locations not clear; take your own container.
Word of a 43-year-old woman hospitalized due to cardiac arrest.
Word of a couple rescued on horseback; helicopters & ATVs cannot reach.
Word of help from as far as Ireland; from all over N. America.
We begin to fall out of the news cycle.
Death, of people, of place; no funeral yet.
Temporary cell towers go up. More messages come in. Still not enough bandwidth to send messages reliably.
The sky is filled with helicopters.
I must stop now. The weight.
2 October
Wednesday, post-Helene Day #5
It is beyond time this time we exist in. I am losing track of days.
D [son] arrives with a gallon of water and $200 cash he hands to me in an embrace before leaving town [following word that if you do not need to be here, leave to reduce impact on resources. D and business partners had five locations on the river. Only one stands post-Helene.]
We have become a meal hub here at T’s home.
I tell T that I am going to stay to help. Memories of returning home last December after pilgrimage. Place of belonging.
Soup dinner with M [son], friends, and neighbors.
Text messages send more easily.
Parades of power trucks driving by.
The sky is filled with helicopters.
In the city, most of the roads are cleared of trees. M [son, helping with search and rescue efforts] says this is not so outside of city limits. He packed water and supplies 12 miles on foot with crew today to reach stranded community.
Word from M that those who refused search and rescue evacuation before the storm were left with a Sharpie and asked to write SS# on the skin.
When the wind is slaughtering trees and the river is a torrent still rising, life is changing, but you don’t know what in life is changing. When the wind stands still and the waters retreat, life is changing, but you don’t know what in life is changing. When in the days that follow one foot in front of the other, and chainsaws are the chorus in the air, and helicopters are in a hurry, life is changing, but you don’t know what in life is changing. “What did we have on Thursday that we do not have today . . . those of us who still have life and limb and family?”3
Ways to Donate and Help Victims in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene
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St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s de Anima, trans. Kenelm Foster, O.P. and Silvester Humpries, O.P. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1951), p. 73, emphasis added.
Many of you have met Mary here in comments.
Chris, an artist, who dropped by T’s place; having dinner in the van, asked this question.
Renée; I was very moved reading your entries today. My wife and I lived through the terror of that storm. The next day, we surveyed the damage; at least 30 trees down around our house, tree limbs on our roof and cars causing minor damage, our long driveway completely covered in downed trees, both large and small; no power, no water, no cell service; completely isolated. We went to work over the next few days, being on survival mode. Once tree crews cleared the driveway from the large trees, for the next few days, we walked to our neighbor's house who had a generator, to fill up on water and take an occasional heavenly shower. Eventually, we were able to get to town to get gas for our cars and food. We still did not know the extent of the catastrophe that had struck our beautiful town. Over the next few days, we started to hear about all the lives lost and communities washed away. It all seemed so surreal; so hard to take in. I would let myself feel the pain of it all briefly but not fully. Reading your entry today, it hit me deeper. I've been telling my friends who are all safe fortunately, that I've never lived through anything like this, though many all over the world have done so; so why not me? Asheville was supposed to be safe from environmental calamities like this. The truth is that nowhere is safe anymore from climate change. Mother Earth is reacting to what humanity has done to her and what we continue to do in the name of progress. It's easier for me to go to anger than despair and sorrow, but all those emotions are fitting right now. It's hard to be optimistic these days. I have felt and seen the camaraderie that often occurs when people live through disasters, and that always feels good to see "strangers" pull together to help and support one another. Clearly, all of humanity needs this camaraderie more than ever as we all face the uncertain future that climate change is creating. I can only hope that we will rise to the occasion as a species, for our children's sake. A little hope from Wendell Berry: "When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my childrens' lives may be; I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water, and feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and I'm free." I wish this grace on everyone.
Renee, thank you for sharing. Thank you for staying and helping. Thank you for your light. As I read, I was unconsciously holding my breath. At the end a large exhale escaped me. I too have no word for this tragedy. Just a blank slate to be written on carefully, slowly, with deep, heartfelt witnessing and listening and being and recognizing that no words may ever fill that space.
Sending as much light to the sorrow and grief and loss as I can.
Much love my friend. I am glad you and Petunia are here.
Erma