If you’re tired of reading my blog posts about Hurricane Helene, just imagine how tired of the slow road to recovery the residents of western North Carolina are.

Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene ravaging much of western North Carolina. As I wrote this on Saturday, North Carolina was in a State of Emergency in preparation for a possible hit from what was developing into Tropical Storm or Hurricane Imelda.

As you can imagine, the word “hurricane” rattles us in North Carolina – all 500 miles or so from the Outer Banks to the Tennessee line.

I have tried to include a report on the area’s recovery every Monday in my blog. You may be tired of reading about it, but I believe it is important for me to use my little blog to remind all of us that it takes years for people and a landscape to recover from a natural disaster.

We tend to have short attention spans now, and there are so many things happening in our country and world that news organizations cannot dwell on the past.

We tend to think in terms of hurricanes being a coastal threat, but most of Hurricane Helene’s rath was visited upon the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, some 500 miles north of where it made landfall on the Gulf coast and dumped up to 31 inches of rain on a rugged, remote terrain. It was a “perfect storm” of wind and rain coming on the heels of several days of heavy rain.

It is estimated that Hurricane Helene did $60 billion in damage to North Carolina alone. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee also had damage, but my state’s damage was so severe that I have chosen to concentrate on it.

Likewise, I have primarily reported on the status of road repairs. That is not to ignore the fact that damage to homes, businesses, and lives is even more important. It is just not possible for me to gather details about the recovery of those aspects of life. I hope my weekly updates about the repair and reconstruction of our roads and highways have served as an indicator that people’s lives are still in disarray.

Today I will share with you a sampling of the damage, the progress being made, and the never-give-up spirit of the people of western North Carolina. There have been many milestones in the recovery, but there is still a long way to go.

Please don’t forget the people.

Coal deliveries via rail

WLOS-TV in Asheville reported that a CSX coal train arrived in Spruce Pine on Thursday – the first train headed south to arrive in Spruce Pine since Hurricane Helene hit a year ago. Sixty miles of CSX railroad tracks were severely damaged in the storm.

Fish hatchery

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission reports that the Armstrong State Fish Hatchery in McDowell County, which was nearly destroyed by the hurricane, is anticipated to be fully operational in November. More than 600,000 hatchery fish died in the storm. The facility was partially operational last spring.

“Each dollar anglers spend to fish for mountain trout in North Carolina returns $1.93 to its economy and results in a $1.38 billion impact, according to new data from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC).”

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Some people are still living in FEMA housing. In fact, people are in some cases opting to purchase the FEMA trailers to continue to live in.

WBTV in Charlotte reported that “state officials estimated as of Wednesday, Sept. 24, North Carolina had received federal funds to cover about 10.6% of the state’s total $60 billion Helene damage estimate.”

The station’s online report quoted an Avery County elected official as saying, “They keep changing the goalposts.” There is growing frustration in Avery and Yancey counties after FEMA denied funding for debris removal that local officials thought were eligible for reimbursement. Mountains of tree debris create fire hazard during dry spells in such heavily wooded areas.

Local officials in mountain counties are complaining about how slow the paperwork is being processed by FEMA along with inconsistency in guidelines. A FEMA spokesperson decline an interview with WBTV and offered no explanation of the cleanup projects in Avery County.

Veterans Restoration Quarters

Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry’s decades-old transitional shelter for homeless veterans was severely damaged and uninhabitable after the hurricane.

The more than 250 residents were evacuated during the hurricane induced flooding of the Swannanoa River during the storm. Water was more than a foot deep as the last evacuation bus pulled away from the property.

The WBTV report stated, “The timeline for reopening the Veterans Restoration Quarters is likely years away and is estimated to cost at least $13 million.”

Food relief

Last week 1,800 boxes of groceries were packed by volunteers in Charlotte and distributed near Asheville by MANNA FoodBank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, and Food Lion.

The CEO of MANNA FoodBank was quoted in a WSOC-TV report as saying, “And what we’re seeing is the highest need for emergency food assistance that we’ve ever seen in our 42-year history.”

Beloved Asheville

Excerpts from Beloved Asheville’s website: https://www.belovedasheville.com/:

“We became a major distribution hub sharing life-saving supplies with 15,000 people a day in impacted zones from Marshall to Chimney Rock, Barnardsville, Burnsville, Spruce Pine, Pensacola, Waynesville, Marion, Old Fort, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, Asheville, and Fairview–towns big and small and mountain hollers. We shared millions of pounds of food, millions of gallons of water, and millions of necessities from hygiene, first aid, and tools for clean up and repairs.”

“We know it will take years to heal these mountains and our people. And we are committed to be here for the long-haul until the last nail. And we need people to join us in this commitment. We carry deep wounds from this storm, but we are stronger than we could have ever imagined. We know that together we can restore, heal, and rebuild this beautiful land and lift up our mountain neighbors. We invite you to join this movement to heal Appalachia.”

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue

Excerpts from Brother Wolf Animal Rescue’s newsletter last Thursday, looking back over the year since Hurricane Helene completely wiped out their facility…

“We lost neighbors, communities were swept away, and Brother Wolf’s entire campus…everything we had built since 2007, was swallowed by floodwaters. Every physical asset we relied on to save lives was gone overnight.”

“The day before the storm hit, something extraordinary happened. In just two hours, 100 animals were urgently evacuated from our shelter and carried into the arms of loving foster homes, saving them from a fate we can’t bear to think of.”

“In the days after, with no power, no water, no internet, our staff met in parking lots and drove through broken roads to orchestrate the transport of 150 animals out of the disaster zone. With partners, we treated over 1,200 injured pets—covered in fish hooks, with broken bones, sick from toxic floodwaters—and stood beside their families as they survived a nightmare.”

“These are the facts, but no list of numbers can tell the whole story. Because the hurricane did not end when the waters receded.It is still here. It is in us. It will be with us forever—a lasting scar and, somehow, a guide for what’s to come.

“And through all of it, the animals have been our compass. 

“When people think of animal rescue, they often picture the animal being saved. The dog carried out of floodwaters, the sick cat adopted from an overflowing shelter. And yes—that is true, we do save them; but what is just as true is how those same animals save us.”

“Today, one year later, the world feels heavy – full of griefs far beyond our own. In this shared sorrow, we’ve discovered that even as we mourn what was lost, animals are finding new beginnings. Families are laughing again. Neighbors are still helping neighbors. And together, we are slowly healing.”

“The ASPCA opened their doors to us, temporarily sharing their space so we never had to stop helping animals. Not for One. Single. Day.”

“As we look ahead, we carry both the weight of what was lost and the bright hope of what is to come. The road to rebuilding will be long, but also filled with possibility—and we are more certain than ever that the future holds incredible things for Brother Wolf, for the animals, and for our community.

“A new chapter is unfolding for Brother Wolf, and your kind heart is woven into the fabric of our story. Your belief in us has carried us through the darkest year of our lives, and together we are stepping into a future brighter than we could have ever imagined. Our story continues, written in every life touched, and enduring beyond storms and time: in saving them, we save each other too.”

Jake Jarvis of Precision Grading

I have mentioned Jake Jarvis of Precision Grading of Saluda, North Carolina, several times on my blog since September 27, 2024. I continue to follow him on Facebook. He is still out and about with his heavy equipment in the mountains of North Carolina every day, helping people and not charging them a penny unless that have insurance money with which to pay him.

Hurricane Helene Update at the end of Year One of Recovery

As of Friday, 38 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included five US highways, two state highways, and 31 state roads. That’s the same as last Friday’s NCDOT report. Progress seems slow, but remember that more than 1,400 roads were closed a year ago Saturday.

Of course, sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina will remain closed for another year or more, and I-40 at the Tennessee line will continue to be just two lanes at 35 miles-per-hour for a couple more years while five miles of the highway are being rebuilt in the Pigeon River Gorge.

Janet