10/03/2024

October 3, 2024

In all my years of living in Southern Appalachia, I haven’t seen what I’m seeing now.

There have been disasters before. In the early 1990s, right before I returned from India, the mountains got hit with a snowstorm. People in these parts still talk about the Blizzard of ’93. It dumped several feet of snow, cutting off power, isolating towns, and causing deaths and destruction, and it happened again in the late 90s.

There’ve also been hurricanes, including Hugo.

Back in the late-1980s, I woke to howling winds and heavy downpours. Schools closed, and even universities locked their doors (unheard of at that time). Hugo became North Carolina’s “first billion-dollar storm,” with lives, houses, businesses, and power lost.

People of the Southern-US Mountains are no stranger to disasters.

Tales are still told about mining accidents, landslides, blizzards, droughts, and floods. But there’s been a kind of quiet agreement between communities and these mountains: we’ll face certain hardships, but at least those rolling blue ridges will generally protect us from other devastating forces, like the most punishing effects of hurricanes.

Now, our stories are changing.

What Hurricane Helene has done to parts of Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Western North Carolina will give rise to a new crop of stories about devastation, survival, and recovery.

As I’m writing this, I recognize my fortune, all while trying to make space in my muddled brain for others’ misfortunes. Hell, I wasn’t even here when Helene roared into these mountains.

I was out of the country as reports rolled in, and suddenly my social media feeds darkened with tales of terror, grief, and loss. While I was in sunny paradise, I watched hell descend on my beloved homeland.

For a brief time, I couldn’t get hold of my 80+ year-old mother who lives alone in Western North Carolina, a region ravaged by Helene. When I finally got her on the phone, she told me that she was running around filling up pots and pans before the town’s water ran out, a main pipe having burst.

I was at a fancy resort as Mom had to leave the safety of her home and make her way to the store, only to find empty shelves. She ended up being fortunate too. She had enough gas and a strong, healthy body, allowing her to eventually track down water. Her story gave me a measure of peace.

The other stories don’t.

Stories about people desperate to reach stranded aging parents in rural areas. Stories about managers of a local business forcing employees to stay and continue working in waist-deep flood waters, some precious souls ultimately carried away to their deaths. Stories about people watching helplessly as loved ones—family, co-workers—were swept away by turbulent, debris-choked waters. Stories about homes collapsing into raging rivers. Stories about entire towns being cut off, still cut off, isolated, grieving, and struggling.

There are stories about courage too.

Several of my former students (Appalachian residents) have been collecting donations and heading into devastated communities, delivering water, gas, and food. Already overloaded and overwhelmed, animal shelters are taking in traumatized dogs and cats, and people are working to reunite cows and horses with their humans. And local schools, parks & recs, and congregations have become staging areas for donations to be received, sorted, and distributed, and volunteers are flooding these places.

These stories will continue to emerge, along with the others about dramatic rescues: dangerous helicopter airlifts of stranded hospital staff and patients; hundreds of animals evacuated from Asheville; and Kingsport firefighters saving a dog stuck 20 feet up in a tree.

Unfortunately, most stories of heroism, loss, survival, and recovery will recede from public attention, along with flood waters.

Yet, the narrative landscape of many Southern Appalachian communities will be forever changed along with the Helene-ravaged landscape.

The road to recovery will be long, rutted, twisty, and full of switch backs.

In an upcoming special newsletter, I'll include ways you can help out, so please subscribe @https://anakwrenn.com/. The hurricane-issue is scheduled to release soon after I've finished compiling a list of credible charities working in affected areas.