Day 16 (Saturday, 10/12), 28 degrees at 7 am
FBEMC (our electric cooperative) crews came down Hannah Branch yesterday and repaired lines that returned power to most of the community, including our house. After the storm knocked out our power, it took a couple days to stop mindlessly flipping light switches. Now, after two weeks without electricity flowing through our switches and receptacles, and without water in our taps, there’s been another period of adjustment to remember that switching on a light is an option, and that I can just wash my hands and fill the tea kettle at the sink, instead of going to the creek or yard hydrant.
I’m still reliant on neighborhood satellite hotspots for all digital communication. Some people’s phones get cell service now, but I was dependent on wifi for messaging and calling even before Helene, and now it’s the same, but I have to leave the house to pick up a wifi signal.
Also on Friday, I learned more details from some of the search and rescue teams doing recovery along the river. I was working with friends clearing trees that been pushed by the river onto the Green Toe Ground field and fenceline, and there were search and rescue teams working nearby as well. A team of Charlotte firefighters was working alongside a K-9 team from Virginia, searching debris piles for human remains.
One of the firefighters told us this is by far the worst flood disaster he or any of his colleagues had ever worked … or even heard of. He’s worked many hurricanes in coastal areas where the flood waters are slow-moving, and he said he knew people who worked the Kentucky floods a few years back that were more similar to our situation, but on a much smaller scale. All the responders agreed the Helene flooding disaster was much larger in scope and magnitude. It covers an extensive area, including the highest peaks on the east coast. He said this is the largest response to a natural disaster he’s ever heard of, and that none of them had ever seen flooding like this, where the flood waters raged so rapidly that the crews at this point are literally picking up pieces of human remains. The burly fireman's voice constricted, and my body tensed and vision blurred as he confided this information. They are on the second of three sweeps that will be done in the hunt for human remains. The California crews that I encountered several days ago were making the initial sweep with dogs; the Charlotte crew said they’ll be around for another week to finalize the search.
What initially appeared from the ground as a chaotic response has been coming into focus. These are professional crews and are very professionally executing a methodical search. Even if our own information and communication on the ground has been scattershot, these crews are maintaining tight internal communication networks and are no doubt working closely with county officials. The volunteer I spoke with a few days ago who told me the crazy high numbers of bodies found along the Cane River was likely not fully integrated with this network of professional responders, some of whom have been here since a day or two before the flood. Perhaps what he had actually heard were numbers for potential hits on debris piles (the dogs indicate there is something worth searching for), or perhaps he mistook reports he heard of body parts for whole bodies. That would explain the large discrepancy between his casualty numbers and the numbers issued by the Sheriff’s office.
Jeff Goodman and SPMS and AMS staff, along with an assortment of other community adults, have led a daily school program all week for local kids (many of whom won’t be back in real school for at least another week, or several). Yesterday, before my time at Green Toe, we took the “middlers” (ages 7-11) to the river gage to get a more accurate reading of the flood level. The gage went out long before the flood crested, and the river ended up several feet above even the gage’s antenna. With the kids, we first measured the height of noticeable debris hung up in a nearby tree, and transferred that measurement to our flood marker tree (all our flood signs and their tree miraculously survived). That debris cluster was 7’ above the 1977 flood marker which stands at 17.41’. Then we began to study the tree itself and discovered more subtle hints of the flow of the floodwaters — the bark was clearly scuffed much higher than 7’ above the 1977 line. In the end, we measured from small twigs embedded in the bark and clear scuff marks that were up to 106” above the 1977 mark. We feel quite confident about this new reading, and have determined that the 2024 flood level is 26.25 feet, +/- a few inches (nearly 9’ higher than 1977, the previously highest recorded flood on this river). You can find sources that are referring to this flood as anywhere between a thousand-year-flood, and a thirty-thousand-year-flood. There is much discussion in the community (at least in my circles) about whether this flood ushers in a new era. Is what was once a thousand-year-flood now a hundred-year-flood? A fifty-year-flood? A ten-year-flood? More on this in a future post.
At noon on Friday – the end of the school week – Jeff led a group ceremony at the site of Granny’s Beach. We all sang rounds of the Waters of Babylon, while everyone took turns placing a leaf in the water and watching the river take it away. It was a beautiful and moving moment, as we all rekindled relationships with the river in the spot where these kids spent many happy hours of their childhood playing at the water’s edge. I’ve been getting in the river daily for over a week, assuming that it is as clean as ever by now, but lately I’ve become more suspicious of it. Now that we have indoor plumbing again, my river dunks will convert from bathing to cold plunges, and I will take a shower after my river dip. More on that, too, another day.
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