NEWS

Rodney Graham and his mountain friend (Ethan photo)

I had the opportunity to go up to the mountains today to help a friend a bit. Although I hadn’t spoken to her for probably five years, I followed her on social media with some intrigue as she changed her lifestyle from owning a million-dollar home on Lake Norman, to living simply in a small home on three acres of heaven on earth next to the South Toe River in Burnsville. From what I could tell, she makes a living by making clothing and growing vegetables and such. Not gonna lie, I observed this transformation with a touch of envy.

After the “predecessor rain event” (meteorologist term) that happened on the night of Wednesday, October 2, and into Thursday morning, dumping about five inches of rain, she posted a video of the South Toe River to Facebook. It was clearly flowing with much more volume than normal, but it was well within its banks. She closed her post with “thankfully the river is receding.”

But, the river didn’t recede. The next day between 15 and 20 inches of rain fell in this part of North Carolina, by some estimates 40 trillion gallons of rainwater. And most of that water ended up in the streams and rivers that flow through and down these mountains.

Earlier this week she’d posted that she was still without power, and thus without heat, and the weather was turning cold in the mountains. Through the kindness of a stranger, she was able to procure a wood burning stove and have it installed in her home. But, no wood, which is quite ironic given the number of trees that are lying around now (note: freshly fallen trees don’t burn well). So, she posted a list of needs on social media, and I texted her and asked her greatest need. “Firewood, dry, and small enough to fit in a wood burning stove.” So, I loaded up my Subaru Outback (thank you Lee’s Firewood of Huntersville) with dry firewood small enough to fit into a wood burning stove and headed for Burnsville.

She texted me directions to her home, with the admonition “don’t follow GPS.”  So, man that I am, I plugged her address into my navigation system and headed west.

GPS took me up I-40, where at some point you start to notice the unusual number of large trees that are lying off the side of the highway. Around exit 105, I got on some other road that took me through Shelby, and then there must have been at least a dozen turns and short drives on various mountain roads. I figured that the Google Maps algorithm was outsmarting all of the closed roads and taking me on the quickest route. And along the way, I enjoyed the changing leaves and the beauty of the mountains. To me, going to Carolina in my mind means heading west. I know for others it means heading east. That’s the great thing about North Carolina.

Until I got close to Burnsville, my thought was that things didn’t seem as bad as the photos and videos I’d seen on the news and on social media. That thought quickly changed when I got on Blue Rock Road and started driving along the South Toe River. The road was a mess, but passable, and instead of a river, the South Toe looked like a forest of fallen trees with some water running through them. And in those trees were all manner of human artifacts from canoes to refrigerators to the occasional car.

South Toe River neat Burnsville

When my GPS told me to turn left on Highway 1152, and there was no Highway 1152 (one of my photos is of the South Toe where there used to be a bridge – that’s Highway 1152, don’t turn left there), I texted my friend who then called me and set me straight on how to get to her house, which I managed to do in another 20 minutes or so. It turns out Highway 1152 would have been the quickest route except for the matter of it not existing.

After I got to her house and was introduced to her dogs and a man who lived in a nearby home, we took a walk around the property. I was anxious to see the river, so I steered us in that direction.

We sat on a rock overlooking the South Toe River, a rock that the river almost reached after the “predecessor rain event.”  I looked back at a small cottage she owns as a rental next to her own home and guesstimated that the river must have risen at least 20 feet to reach it. She told me that FEMA told her it was 30 feet. That’s 30 vertical feet. The home was a good 150 feet away from the river horizontally. So, for a time, the South Toe River, which is usually about 30 feet wide and five feet deep in this area, was about 200 feet wide and 35 feet deep, and moving with an unimaginable force. And the outer edge of that torrent picked up her home, twisted it, and sat it back down in a different location.

The river is back to normal now, although it’s a new normal;  there are bars of huge boulders every so often that weren’t there before the storm. Later I would see boulders the size of cars that the river had moved. The force of water is enormous.

After unloading the firewood, carefully measuring each piece against a reference stick to make sure it wasn’t too long (the too long ones got put in the “pile for the guy who is coming by tomorrow with a chainsaw” stack), and helping with a few other odds and ends, it was time to head back home to Davidson.

After the many twists and turns of the drive up, I decided to look for a more direct route home. I’d been on 80 South just before getting to her home, and I noticed it was a direct route to Marion, so 80 South it was.

Burnsville is in the area of Mount Mitchell, which rises over 6,600 feet in elevation and is the highest point east of the Mississippi. And on this day the top of it was covered in snow, and below that the trees were turning a myriad of colors. It’s what is known as “snowliage,” and it’s stunning to see. The mountains are still very beautiful.

The drive quickly turned from beauty to scenes of disasters. The first clue came when I got to a point where the downhill half of the road was washed away, a gaping hole in its place, all marked by a single orange cone. I felt comfortable that the weight of my Outback wasn’t going to cause the remaining lane to collapse, so I skirted by on the uphill side. I did this dozens of times over the next few miles. I kept waiting for the road to just end in a cliff, forcing me to do a three-point turn on half a lane. WHY ON EARTH IS THIS ROAD EVEN OPEN??

It is hard to describe how this water changed the land. Huge trees were strewn around like matchsticks. Sections of forest were gone, with mud and bare earth in their place.

Scene of destruction along the South Toe River

I came to a corner with a view of destruction that I will never forget. Cars in trees, homes snapped in half, with half in one place and the other half far downstream. The worst was a community of dozens of mobile homes that had been obliterated. It was hard to tell where they had once been. They’d all just been pushed to the side by what had to have been the most water to ever come down this mountain river. I hope the residents were able to get out before that massive wall of water swept them away.

I’ve seen lots of photos and videos of the aftermath of the storm, none of which mentally prepared me for seeing it up close. It is just terrible. I didn’t take pictures of the worst of it, the many homes where I knew people had died just in the last few days. It just didn’t seem right. I know the image will always be with me.

When I finally got to the bottom of the mountain there were a couple of state troopers with lights flashing, and as I went by them, I noticed they were parked next to a “ROAD CLOSED” sign, and I wondered why there wasn’t a similar set up at the top of the mountain. I wished there had been. After I was able to exhale, I broke down and bawled for a good 20 minutes. And then I called my wife, Melissa, and bawled some more. And then today, some more. It is truly heartbreaking to think of these people living in this idyllic setting by a beautiful river, and then in a matter of hours the river turns on them and it’s all gone.

All of this is to say that our neighbors in western North Carolina will need help for years to come. I really don’t know how this region is put back together whole. Fortunately, there are lots of organizations and individuals that are working on it. It can’t possibly ever be the same; the water altered the land so dramatically. But it is still beautiful and there are beautiful people who live there.

There are so many people who are doing so much to help. I drove by World Central Kitchen in Burnsville. Every church I passed was loaded in the parking lot with supplies and cars of volunteers. FEMA and the National Guard were out in force. Chain saws were buzzing everywhere, and heavy machinery was everywhere, starting the process of putting the roads back together.

The scale of the recovery effort is staggering. What I saw was just one area in a remote part of the mountains. There are dozens of similar places, and then there are commercial districts like those in Chimney Rock and Asheville and Swannanoa and Marshall, which are disasters on an even larger scale.

Highway 1152 bridge washed out

Someone was once quoted as saying “the scale of the problem is so huge, what can I possibly do?” And the answer is “You don’t have to solve it all. You do what you can do, I’ll do what I can do, and together we will make a difference.”

There’s also a song from the 1970s which I think is called “I Can Help,” and it says, “it would sure do me good to do you good, let me help.”  Help is good for the receiver; it’s also good for the giver.

The people of Western North Carolina are going to need a lot of help, for a long time. Inevitably, as it always does, the media attention will begin to fade. But the need will remain for a very long time. Businesses will get put back together, but it will take longer to put people’s lives back together. Many people are of limited means; most people did not have flood insurance because who would think the river is going to rise 30 feet when it hasn’t done that in records dating back to the 18^th century?

I hope what you will take away from this article is an impetus to continue doing what so many Davidsonians have done: donate supplies, donate money, donate your talents, or volunteer with organizations and go to the mountains and help out in any way you can. And continue doing that for years to come. You can’t solve it all, but don’t let that stop you. You can make a difference.

Ultimately only the federal government (that’s all of us) will have the financial resources that are needed in the mountains. But along with those very necessary checks and resources is a need for a human touch, to let people know that they are not forgotten and that we care. Showing up is huge.

In the case of my friend in Burnsville, she’s been traumatized. The beautiful river that attracted her to this land took her home and left the land deeply scarred. But she’s also hugely grateful that people are showing up. A chain saw brigade showed up, a church brought her a generator, the National Guard showed up, FEMA showed up, a stranger brought her a wood burning stove, and I showed up in the smallest possible way that I could show up. But she said that “your showing up means so much to me.” So, keep finding ways to show up. It means more than you might ever imagine.

Rodney Graham
Rodney Graham is a local homebuilder who has lived in Davidson since 2005 with his wife Melissa. They have raised two wonderful children in Davidson:  Marshall, a recent graduate of Chapel Hill who is now living and working in Manhattan, and Emma Claire, who recently hiked the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail from start to finish during a gap year from college. Rodney is a graduate of West Virginia University but is currently emphasizing his graduate degree from Vanderbilt since they beat Alabama in football.​