In all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, my prayer is that each of us will make room in our hearts for the Christ Child and other innocent refugee children just looking for a safe place to lay their heads.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season no matter what your religion is!

A Hurricane Helene Update

Eighty-eight days after the storm hit western NC…

Roads: Interstate 40 is still closed near the TN line. Last week an additional part of the eastbound lanes collapsed due to a slide caused by wet conditions, freezing, and thawing. This is in an area prone to landslides ever since the interstate was built in 1966, but the washout in September was unprecedented.

Contractors have been working to open a seven-mile stretch of the westbound lanes of the interstate for two-way traffic and had hoped for that to happen the first week in January. Last week’s slide will delay that for a yet-to-be-determine amount of time.

The bridge on US-70 between Swannanoa and Asheville was completed last week, which was a quicker rebuild than had been expected.

As of Friday, of the 1,329 roads that were closed in September due to Hurricane Helene, 184 remain closed.

Blue Ridge Parkway: There is still no estimated date for all the parkway in NC to be reopened.

Housing: Statistics on housing are much harder to find than information from the NC Department of Transportation. From what I can gather – and this isn’t very reliable information – 5,000 families have opted to take FEMA funds to pay for hotel rooms and perhaps rental property. I cannot find a number for how many families and individuals opted for FEMA trailers, nor can I find records of how many people have been housed in tiny homes constructed by the Amish and other volunteers. There are lots of moving parts to this part of the recovery. Due to the terrain, many former homesites cannot safely accommodate a FEMA trailer.

Working in conjunction with BeLoved Asheville (https://www.belovedasheville.com/), Lowe’s Home Improvement, a dozen or so homebuilders (putting together some 400 volunteers), and NASCAR teams are working together to make tiny homes available for displaced residents. Lowe’s supplies the materials, the homebuilders supply the labor, and NASCAR teams furnish their haulers to deliver the tiny houses. The report I read indicated that 100 tiny houses have been/will soon be distributed in western NC by this particular effort.

Retail: The Walmart Supercenter in Boone partially reopened on Friday. The produce, meat, and bakery departments are still being closed. I mention that just as an example of how long recovery is taking even for huge businesses. Imagine how much longer it will take for many small businesses to recover… if they ever do.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read and time to read it.

Don’t take friends and family for granted.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet