Helene Recovery, Day 13: lots of help has arrived

(Note: this post was subsequently edited to include casualty numbers from the Oct 9 weekly newspaper). 

While we cleared out the remaining salvageable furniture from the Celo Inn, this Red Cross van stopped to ask us if we needed anything to eat. We assured them we were good, and they moved along.

34 degrees at 7 am; I searched for frost but surprisingly found none. Our solar dehydrator is full of an enormous flush of Helene-induced shiitakes right now, but they’ll be ready to pack up later this crisp sunny day, and the dehydrator will be ready for the peppers from the garden. 

Over the past several days, I’ve encountered a few of the rescue and recovery crews from around the country that I’d been hearing about. The first I met was a team of 4 National Guardsmen who were sent to South Toe Elementary on Day 3 to secure a helicopter landing zone (the chopper was delayed, and didn’t end up arriving until the next morning). The unit was based in Raleigh, and two of the Guardsmen were App St students. They had been called to duty on Thurs, drove down to Durham, joined the other members of their team, and drove a troop transport vehicle back up the mountain on Friday. They recounted the 18 hours it took for them to drive from Marion to Burnsville (normally a 50-min drive). They had no idea the name of the roads they traveled on, but they must have come up 226A, because they arrived in Little Switzerland 12 hours after departing Marion, cutting their way through fallen trees the entire way. From there, it took another 6 hours to get to Burnsville via Spruce Pine. 

From Day 1, I’d been hearing about a swiftwater rescue team from New York State that conducted rescues in Busick. It puzzled me how a team from NY had been in Busick on Day 1. I finally met a pair of them on Day 10 when two of them drove their ATV through our neighborhood, stopping at each house, doing damage assessments. I learned that they were sent down on Thursday (on the eve of the storm), initially deployed to Conover, NC, but as the NWS forecast shifted, so was their assignment. They were rerouted to Burnsville, and arrived at midnight on Thursday (after the first 14” of rain had fallen, but before the final and fateful 12.5”).  They’ve been based out of the newly renovated Nu Wray Inn ever since. 

After asking whether our house had suffered storm damage, they ended our conversation with a final question: If another disaster were to strike tomorrow, how many days worth of food and water would we have on hand? I assured them we had infinite water, and several months worth of food (we haven’t even harvested our sweet potatoes or all of our potatoes yet). I wondered about the range of answers they’ve received during their survey, and what their response would be to someone who had little food and water. 

The same day as the visit from the NY state forest rangers, I met another swiftwater/fire crew from Riverside, CA, on the road near Camp Celo. It had taken them 4 days to cross the country with their convoy of 40 teammembers in 10 trucks, including a tractor trailer, swiftwater rescue boats, etc. “We don’t travel lightly,” one of them told me. This 4-person contingent was on Hannah Branch following a GPS waypoint they had been assigned to check out. The red dot on their map was a pile of debris along the river that a helicopter had identified the previous day. They were there with a cadaver dog to check the rubble for human remains. I didn’t stick around long enough to learn what they discovered. 

The previous day, I had spoken with a search and rescue volunteer from Virginia about such operations along the Cane River. He told me the numbers of bodies that had been recovered over the course of just two days in Pensacola and Little Creek. The numbers quite literally made my jaw drop. He said these numbers have not been made public since they are waiting to notify next-of-kin before announcing confirmed deaths. I have heard that Helene is being called the deadliest hurricane since Katrina. Then I read the official statement in the newspaper from the Sheriff’s office reporting 9 dead and 5 still missing in the county. These numbers are far lower than what the volunteer had reported, and I know how hard county officials have been working to document reports of missing people, so I will place my trust in those official numbers. I personally knew, or have second-hand connections to, at least 9 of the 14 listed dead or missing. That’s what it’s like to live in the community of Yancey County.

Now I wonder, will these same FEMA teams be redeployed to Florida to respond to Milton, or are there others around the country on standby to do that? There is certainly no swiftwater rescue still happening around here, and even the recovery of human remains must be nearing an end.