The morning that Hurricane Helene tore Asheville, North Carolina, apart, the first faces I saw were half a dozen of my neighbors preparing to break into my home to see if I was alive. A 40ft oak – ripped from its roots from the next yard – lay on my bedroom roof, dewy green scalloped leaves resting against my window. Just meters below the buckling ancient fascia from my century-old home’s roof, my cattle dog Teddy and I slept. It seems like we should have been crushed there, in bed.
Many were. At least 227 people have died, and that toll is only going to get higher. The rivers are giving up the dead; landslides are yielding corpses. The destruction is grotesque and, in some cases, total, with bridges condemned, roadways eviscerated, and whole towns – Swannanoa, Hot Springs – obliterated. The personal terror I felt that morning is nothing compared to the rage I feel on behalf of those lives unnecessarily lost, those displaced, those struggling to access too few services, and at a governmental response that has seemingly prioritized the most privileged.
I am one of those most privileged. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) showed up to my affluent, resource-secure neighborhood of Asheville on 1 October. However, I have been without power, water and wifi, and had only spotty cell service, since 27 September. There is a curfew in place, there are gas shortages and everyone is living with a profound feeling of disconnection from the rest of the world.
Mutual aid has been a lifeline for me and many others. Several friends and I centralized operations at a home my friend rents that has a gas stove, hot tub and an unoccupied Airbnb apartment. We combined our headlamps and food, and raided the Airbnb for bottled water and disposable cutlery. We’ve flushed toilets using hot tub water. Haywood Road, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, is a hub for mutual aid. BeLoved Asheville fed me free cheesy grits on Wednesday. The acclaimed chefs of Neng Jr’s and Good Hot Fish served free congee, braised vegetables and fresh muscadines on Tuesday. Mental health aid, a free market and water can be found in front of dive bar The Double Crown while Firestorm, an anarchist co-op on the other end of Haywood, has held daily community meetings with hot food and bike mechanics available. Kind neighbors have been putting up signs with whatever they have to offer: diapers, charging stations, produce from their gardens.
But what about those not within walking distance of a mutual aid utopia? The mutual aid comes to them. BeLoved has called for volunteers to hike into the mountains’ jagged topography to bring supplies, news and comfort to those whom vehicles cannot reach. Mules have been dispatched with insulin to traverse into Black Mountain. Barriers to services are not just geographic: Poder Emma is an organization aiding Spanish speakers with everything from diabetic testing strips and infant formula to chainsawing through downed trees.
Besides hearing that Joe Biden did an aerial overpass of our region (“We’ve got your back”) and the appearance of Fema trucks in my gentrified neighborhood on Tuesday, I have seen little evidence of the robust, coordinated, multi-agency response for which I and many others had hoped. Perhaps that’s in part because the roads are in various states of destruction and the cell network barely usable. But, having lived through the pandemic in 2020, I’m skeptical.
Any food I have personally eaten, water I have drank or hope I have felt has come from my neighbors and community. And there is so much hope here: Appalachian people are not a monolith – many of my fellow North Carolinians sit on the other side of the political aisle from me – but I have witnessed enough selfless generosity to keep my heart afloat while we continue to rebuild.
But we cannot rebuild critical water infrastructure, roadways, bridges or our economy from within. The truth is that we need immense federal emergency funding. Right now, western North Carolina does not look at all how you may remember from your bachelorette or mountain biking getaway. There is a day-to-day struggle to survive here right now and a fundamental lack of sustainable resources or services. We are not looking at weeks to recover; we are looking at months and years.
Furthermore, and this cuts to something more uncomfortable: Asheville is a widely proclaimed “climate haven” where the wealthy have historically come to recreate in their second homes while housing-insecure locals subsisting on tips and no insurance serve them extravagant riffs on southern cuisine. Asheville has a long history of prioritizing investment in attracting tourism over investment in infrastructure. We cannot simply rebuild what we were, because what we were was not equitable or sustainable. Even now, in this time of scarcity and tragedy, western North Carolinian towns have had to request that part-time residents stay away and travel plans be postponed.
I began the first Friday after the hurricane staring at the faces of worried neighbors who had been prepared to find my body. Midday, I traipsed through electric line-choked trees older than my great-grandparents and averted mudslides to get to a friend, just to put my arms around her. By sunset, before we knew anything about the death toll or a curfew, we walked down Haywood to get a glimpse of the French Broad River. She was furious, ravenous, still careening through the River Arts District. I could not look long. It felt like something I should not see, something intimate and private. It reminded me of a line from a poem by Ron Rash, a resident of western North Carolina: “They cannot see a river / is a vein in God’s arm.”
Morgan L Sykes is a writer with roots in northern Mississippi, western North Carolina and New York City
