Story by: Olivia Gschwind via UNC Media Hub

Photos by Chrissy Wang

SWANNANOA, N.C. — Daniel Wright usually wakes up around 4:30 a.m. He purchases $20 worth of gas for his generator and drives from his current rental in West Asheville to his home in Swannanoa. When he arrives at his property, he dumps water collected from a dehumidifier before fueling up the generator that powers it. The dull glow of the sunrise provides the light he needs to continue rebuilding his home.

Across from the Swannanoa River lies Beacon Village, a historic neighborhood built in the 1920s for mill workers. It’s now a nearly unrecognizable cluster of homes coated in thick mud and river silt, dried into a fine powder. Piles of ruined belongings sit outside and produce a rotting, damp smell.

Beacon Village was Daniel Wright’s home before Hurricane Helene hit on Sep. 27. Now, the only sound in the structure stripped to its studs is the hum of generators throughout the neighborhood that pull remaining moisture from wood framing. To walk through his house, Wright balances on pieces of plywood in the middle of his barren kitchen to keep from falling through the floor joists.

By 5:30 a.m. on Sep. 27, Wright said, the wind and rain conditions had already escalated to the point that he and his family began to pack essentials in case they had to leave quickly.

Two hours later, Wright, his wife and two sons, ages 19 and 21, fled to a church on higher ground after he got an alert on his work phone to evacuate.

They left their house within two minutes of receiving the alert, driving through 2-3 feet of water to reach safety. At the church, he saw people distraught and screaming about lost family members.

“In that moment I would have never thought that I would be, for a month, picking up the pieces of my home and my life,” Wright said. “That my life would be indefinitely changed from those few hours in that morning.”

Wright said he embraces the work as a part of acceptance, though it hasn’t been easy. He’s paying more than twice his usual mortgage to cover the mortgage on his destroyed home and temporary rent in Asheville.

“Either you let an event like that break you, finish you off, become the end of you, or define who you are or what you are,” Wright said. “Or you go ahead and accept what this is and you start right then.”

One month after the most devastating storm in state history, Swannanoa’s residents are still reeling. Despite sweeping relief efforts, Helene’s impact lingers as a reminder that life here is far from normal and may never be the same.

Amid the vibrant fall leaves on the mountain ridge lies another devastating scene: Swannanoa’s valley, where buildings have been swept away and roads covered in dust. Trees still hold remnants of the flood — plastic bags, cleaning products, and torn T-shirts — marking how high the Swannanoa River rose at Helene’s peak: more than 27 feet.

Helicopters fly overhead, delivering supplies to people who are unreachable by road. Signs are slapped up around town, directing residents to the nearest source of clean water or a free, hot meal. People live in tents along the roadside or in backyards piled with drywall, flooring, and belongings stripped from their flooded homes.

Asha Wild is a former Asheville resident currently staying at her mother’s retirement community in Swannanoa. She said the entire first floor of her townhome in Asheville flooded with water from the river near her neighborhood.

The need for remediation is immense, but many nongovernmental organizations and volunteer groups can help only with clearing mud, damaged furniture and belongings. Wild received a quote for remediation work in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which she said was price gouging.

“So right now, we’re in this weird holding pattern where I have no idea what’s going on,” she said. “We definitely don’t have the money to rebuild what is damaged.”

“I feel like I’ve gotten some of the messaging of, ‘Why aren’t you guys fine yet?’” she said. “And then you look at this and you’re like, we’re still in an apocalypse.”

‘They’re asking when help is going to get here’

As volunteers and residents gather to support each other, there’s an urgent need for more resources and finding assistance remains a massive task because of the magnitude of damage across the western part of the state.

N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper said on Oct. 28 that the state has put up more than 5,000 people in hotels through FEMA investments, but there’s still a challenge in finding interim housing for people because of land available in the mountains. 

“It’s important that we keep the focus on Western North Carolina every single day,” Cooper said. “Because the cameras will soon go away, the attention will not be there like it has been now, and it’s important to continue that.”

The state legislature has since approved three separate relief bills totaling $1.1 billion, still short of Cooper’s $3.9 billion state budget recommendation to rebuild critical infrastructure including homes, businesses and schools.

While presenting the second relief bill to the House Rules Committee on Oct. 24, N.C. Rep. Mark Pless (R-Haywood, Madison) said the first thing his constituents ask him is when help will reach them.

“Help has been there for a while. It’s not enough,” he said. “We know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

The chaos after the storm

The Swannanoa Ingles grocery store, coined the “Swingles” by locals, is a hot spot of relief activity. The grocery store is still closed because of flooding damage, but the parking lot has the space for shower and water trucks to park, police and linemen to station themselves, and people to serve hot meals out of their cars. 

Cayte Gowan travels at least an hour and a half each day from Mars Hill to Swannanoa to serve dinner. A chef who lost her job due to Helene, Gowan now dedicates all her free time to preparing and serving meals made entirely from scratch. She offers gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan options, which she said are hard to find after a natural disaster. 

Gowan said she relies solely on donations to purchase the necessary ingredients and supplies to serve meals.

“I wake up first thing in the morning, Tuesday morning through Sunday morning, and I start prepping and cooking,” Gowan said. “I’m doing all of this out of my own home because I’ve been a professional chef for 14 years, so I know all the sanitation procedures.”

Asha Wild — a vegan and beneficiary of Gowan’s cooking — gathers with others around Gowan’s table as the sun goes down. They joke about being the late crowd and transforming the parking lot into a makeshift pub where volunteer police, community members and old friends can gather to connect despite the dust and poor parking lot lighting. 

“My biggest concern, especially for the people of Swannanoa, is that we’re going to get forgotten,” Gowan said. “The word needs to go out. People need to be aware of what’s going on.”

Dealing with domino effects

Down the road from the Swannanoa Ingles, off the I-40 exit, a Harley-Davidson dealership now serves as the home base control room and airfield for Savage Freedoms Relief Operations. The volunteer organization acted immediately, focusing its efforts on hard-hit areas like Swannanoa as soon as the storm’s eye passed.

Savage Freedoms was originally founded as a training experience for individuals to learn defense and tactical skills from former military personnel. But after Savage Freedoms founder Adam Smith helped rescue his 3-year-old daughter and her mother from the N.C. 9 highway using a civilian helicopter, the Savage Freedoms organization expanded into relief operations.

A. Austin Holmes, a volunteer and Navy Special Operations veteran, said they quickly obtained the FAA approval needed to function as an airfield and perform helicopter rescues and supply drops.

The Harley-Davidson dealership has since been transformed into a makeshift war room and control center, where volunteers keep track of air, ground and logistical operations.

“It’s not militaristic, but it’s the frameworks,” Holmes said. “It’s the same frameworks that we learned fighting a different fight, and now we’re fighting to save people’s lives and give them some semblance of peace again.”

Savage Freedoms VP of Operations Dan Robitaille is a U.S. Army and law enforcement veteran known as the rugged and vigilant ‘Savage Dad’ of the organization’s volunteers.

Robitaille’s biggest concern for the people in Western North Carolina is hypothermia. He said people can’t continue to stay in their tents. 

“Winter is coming,” he said. “There will be hypothermic deaths if we don’t get people into shelter.”

Beyond the inevitable cold weather that will descend on Appalachia, the stripped landscape of mountains from downed trees and eroded topsoil has created ideal conditions for landslides. Robitaille said the spring runoff will cause major catastrophes. 

“We had a brief shower yesterday, about four inches of rain, and we had landslides last night,” he said. “No injuries, no damages, but we had roads that we had to clear again. That will happen again, repeatedly.”

The dust coating the town is also causing problems for volunteers. Robitaille said three men developed respiratory issues after a week, and PPE is in short supply.

“They’re dedicated. They will work through it just as I will,” he said. “But my concern is their health because if they’re sick, we can’t help these people, and if these people get sick, we have no way to clean them up and remediate them well, either.”

Despite his tough exterior, worry washed across Robitaille’s face — the look of someone recalling a painful memory, though this time it was directed at the future. It’s the same fear of uncertainty gripping so many lives after the initial shock of Helene passes.

Robitaille compared the storm’s aftermath to Hurricane Katrina but noted that the simple lives of mountain communities like Swannanoa won’t draw the same attention as a major city.

“People have their lives, so they go back to their lives,” he said. “These people don’t have a life now, so they have nothing to go back to.”

Robitaille had just one message — don’t let the people affected by this storm suffer alone.

“Don’t forget them,” he said.