It’s been 47 days since Helene ripped through Western North Carolina, and from early on in post-storm recovery, I’ve wanted to record the experience. It was and in many ways still surreal. I don’t know that I will be able to capture the true intensity of the experience in retrospect, but before time does its thing with my memories, I want to get out what I do remember…
Monday, September 23, 2024
This is my earliest recollection of what would become Helene.
A hobby meteorologist I follow on Facebook brings the storm into my sphere of awareness with this post:
At this point, we become cautiously aware.
Later that day, he posts again.
Mostly, at this point, I’m focused on the 5″ of rain.
Since purchasing our home in 2012, built into the slope of a hill, we’ve battled flooding in the lower level of our home. The flooding occurs as a result of hydrostatic pressure, basically meaning torrential rains oversaturate the ground and push through water through the seams of our foundation and into the finished basement of our house. It has been our experience that anything over 4″ in a day guarantees flooding in the garage and downstairs guest suite. After 12 years of many tried solutions and countless and exhausting hours spent sucking up water in wet vacs and sweeping it into buckets to avoid demo work, we threw in the literal towel and invested in a drain tile installation / sump pump system…. in April…of this year. Talk about fortuitous timing. Of course, we still don’t know yet just how fortuitous it was.
So, 5″ of rain has certainly piqued our interest, and we’re paying attention. This will be the first test of the new system, and if successful, a solution that will provide peace of mind during heavy rains for which we had been desperately yearning for over a decade.
There was one added concern.
At the end of July, the power had gone out and ever since that time, the backup battery for the sump pump had been sounding an alarm. As it turns out the battery was defective, and we had been trying for almost two months to get the company to come out and replace it.
It’s still early and seeds of concerns are early in conception.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Business as usual. The day was full of meetings and work and not a whole lot of talk about the storm.
Forecast remains somewhat the same as the day before:
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Things start to get a little more serious:
8-10″ is a tremendous amount of rain and a power outage with no backup battery for the sump pump would surely mean trouble for us.
I put in an urgent call with the company to replace the battery. The guy who ends up calling me back reworks his schedule to come up from the Greenville, SC area the following day, Thursday at 1:00. I’m not convinced this is going to happen.
Throughout Wednesday, the National Weather Service was issuing progressively dire warnings:
2:57 am: “Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms continue to migrate northeastward across the southern/central Appalachians, where wet soils have left ground conditions vulnerable to excessive runoff. Isolated instances of flash flooding are possible through early morning.”
11:01 am: “Flash flooding will be possible this afternoon as the Predecessor Rain Event (PRE) begins from northeast Alabama through the Southern Appalachians.”
2:41 pm: “Localized flash flooding into this evening as the Predecessor Rain Event (PRE) expands north west of the south-central Appalachian crest.”
4:14 pm: “Training thunderstorms will continue to lift over the Atlanta Metro area rest of this afternoon and over the eastern side of the southern Appalachians through tonight. Flash flooding is likely, particularly in Appalachian terrain, through this evening before becoming considerable to catastrophic overnight.”
At this point, thoughts and concerns transform into action. I’m securing things around the yard and moving things inside. Michael tells me he’s working a little later that day since he won’t be working Friday and around 5pm, we get the call that school is canceled the following day.
Heavy rains have settled into the area.
By Wednesday afternoon, Helene had escalated to a category 1 hurricane and was still roughly 500 miles from making US landfall, yet we were confused as to whether we were already feeling her wrath.
Friends are starting to check in with one another. The usual, low-lying locations are starting to flood and the rivers and creeks are rising. “How’s everyone holding up?”, “Is your house okay?”, “I’m driving in this mess trying to get home.” “I’m frantically cooking and preparing as best as I can before we lose power.”, “Be safe, y’all.”
As it turns out, we were in the midst of a low-pressure system that preceded Helene and stalled over the Tennessee Valley, effectively leading to catastrophic rainfall and flooding before Helene even arrived. By midnight Thursday, rainfall totals at the Asheville airport had already exceeded 4 inches.
As the rain was being pushed under the garage door, we started to prepare makeshift sandbags to divert the water away from the house and make sure that the gutters are clear.
Hearing tornado warnings for upstate SC further fueled our suspicions that we were not getting a sump pump battery replacement the following day so we decided to don our rain gear and head out to see if stores still had any generators in stock.
Tractor Supply was sold out, but Lowe’s had plenty for the picking so we doled out a grand to have a backup plan in case the power went out with the hope that we would simply return it if we didn’t need it.
We go home and hunker down, feeling as though we had done what we needed to do for the moment and after checking the garage for water, call it a day.
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Kids are home, and Michael and I both take off work to continue preparations.
Weather status is increasingly ominous.
By 7:45am, the French Broad River had nearly reached 14 feet and was predicted to peak at 21 feet by 8pm. (For context, 13 feet is considered moderate flooding and 18 feet is considered major flooding. ) Mandatory evacuations are in place for particularly vulnerable areas near the rivers.
That morning, the guy who is supposed to be coming to replace our sump pump battery calls to let us know he’s not coming. Frankly, that he thought he was ever coming at all was more shocking to me than him not coming. “Totally understand. We expected this call, but can you suggest a place where we can get a battery and replace it ourselves?” Buying the generator felt like a good move, but if the power went out in the middle of the night, and we weren’t awake to hook it up to the sump pump, it wasn’t going to do us much good. Ultimately, he was able to purchase what we needed in town for us to pickup.
About this time, I see a post in a Facebook group that Brother Wolf Animal Rescue is starting to flood, and they were seeking foster homes to evacuate all of the animals in their care.
Shortly after sending my daughter a screenshot of this post and despite lukewarm support from my husband and no definitive understanding of what was needed, we were en route to Swannanoa River Rd to see if we could help.
Floodwaters were lapping the roadsides, most stores had already or were in the process of closing up shop, noticeably fewer cars were on the roads and there was an eerie, frenetic energy hanging in the air as folks scurried around, finishing up storm preparations. Within 15 minutes, we had signed the paperwork and were on our way home with, Paula, our house guest for Helene, and by the time I had gotten home to let anyone else know they needed fosters, all 139 dogs and cats had already been evacuated from the shelter.
While we were gone, Michael was able to pick up the battery and successfully got that hooked up to the sump pump. Phew. That was a huge relief. And, at this stage in the game, we thought we would be returning the generator and getting some money back.
The evolving weather reports have started comparing the impending storm to the 1916 floods. Of course, I imagine very few people, if any, are still alive