The above is a panorama photo from Chimney Rock, one I took when we first visited the Asheville area. Lake Lure in the distance became a raging river through the town itself, totally wiped out by Helene. The storm was preceded by three days of deluging rain.
That was taken before I was writing this blog. Our love affair with Asheville and the surrounding area was immediate. Its beauty touched us deeply.
Asheville itself is an enclave of urban sophistication with its boutique shops, bookstore, wine bars, restaurants, and bohemian vibe. At times we talked about living there, if not full time, buying a condo or small house tucked away in the mountains near Asheville.
We looked at properties, but did we want to take on that additional responsibility? Instead, we began to rent for stays of up to a month or visit for a shorter time and stay at its iconic Grove Park Inn. We rented condos and finally homes through a broker or AirBnB. Each time was in different area, so we learned much about the local infrastructure, its highways and back roads, historical sites, its many places of natural beauty, stopping along the Blue Ridge Parkway to take in those sights.
From nearly twenty years ago, I’m at Looking Glass Falls which is along the Parkway. The water would have been over my head during Helene.
Our last visit was just a year ago. There are other entries in these pages covering Asheville.
Could those images we’ve been seeing be the same towns and mountains we have loved to visit? There are no words to describe them. Biltmore Village had water ten feet high and then mud, destroying the Village that housed the workers who built the Biltmore Estate. The Village in more recent years was made up of local shops and restaurants.
The devastation is incomprehensible, critical infrastructure so damaged that it will take a very long time to recover. Meeting immediate needs is the first priority. If I was younger, I’d load up our SUV with water and non-perishables and drive there. I can do the drive in one long day, but to where as once you get south of Asheville with every road is blocked?
So we consulted their local online paper the ‘Asheville Citizen Times’, looking for “boots on the ground” organizations and learned that World Central Kitchen is already there, partnering with local charities such as Food Connection. They have started a schedule of regularly distributing meals.
That’s if residents can get to the distribution points.
Western North Carolina’s NPR station mentioned relief efforts that were being made as well by other
organizations.
Hope Mills Inc. relief work is truly immediate. Those efforts are being made by volunteer pilots flying mostly helicopters and they’ve already made 400 flights into remote mountain communities. They have collection points at nearby airports for donations of water, non- perishables, medicine, critical ones such as insulin. Donations go for fuel and those supplies. As the organizer said in a post yesterday: “Our pilots are kicking butt and delivering goods to the most treacherous areas you can land. They don't complain, they just do. What they are seeing is beyond explanation. They are heroes.”
Therefore, not being able
to be there to help out, we made donations to both. Maybe some readers will want to do the same
to Hope Mills Inc. and World Central Kitchen. Or another organization mentioned by NPR.
The photo below is from
near the top of Mt. Mitchell, the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi and one
of the places to visit along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Although Helene was not a hurricane when it
wrought its destruction in the mountains, Mt. Mitchell recorded a wind gust of
106 MPH. It was the flooding though that
did such apocalyptic devastation.
