When I went to bed on Thursday, September 27, 2024, I had no idea how much life would change over the next few weeks. As a native South Carolinian, I’m no stranger to wind, an occasional tornado, and lots of rain associated with hurricanes. I’m located approximately 150 miles from the SC coast. Most hurricanes weaken significantly over land and such was expected with Helene.
However, Helene didn’t get the memo to do what she should have done and normally hurricane safe areas like Augusta, GA, Greenville, SC, and Asheville, NC took the brunt of this storm. As of today Sunday, October 6, 2024, a full 9 days after the storm, I still don’t have power. Or running water. Or flushing toilets. In the grand scheme of things, I’m OK, the kitties are OK, and the house is OK. There is a lot of property damage and probably close to 100 trees down, but all the work this summer of tree maintenance really paid off.
It was even worse in North Carolina as all the rain caused mudslides and rock slides in addition to the flooding by rivers overflowing their banks. Interstate 40 between North Carolina and Tennessee is gone. It just fell into the Pigeon River and it’s a universe miracle that no one was actually on the part that fell into the water. Two weeks later, transportation officials are estimating that it *should* be restored by 2028! As someone who drives to Knoxville, on a some-what regular basis, this makes my commute nearly twice as long. So that sucks.
A lot of coworker and friends have made regular trips to Asheville area, myself included. The damage is catastrophic. Words like that are used a lot in the quest for sensational journalism, but actual towns are gone. Rushing water [24 inches in 2 days!} bent sSteel beams holding bridges up got mangled by rushing water.
We’ve gotten a lot of assistance from the National Guard. I’ve seen linemen from Canada working on my road to cut away trees, rebuild substations, and restring. electrical lines. Who knows when the lights will come back on. Despite everything that has happened over the last week, I’m still grateful that it wasn’t worse for me.
