a little grace

“Everyone has just been through a hurricane, and they are all going to handle that differently.  We have to extend them that grace.”

Sitting on a porch in the downtown we were able to exchange the news.  Inside the disaster area communication was restricted mostly to word of mouth, or short sporadic texts.  Everyone’s world shrank to within less than a mile from where they sat.  News came in from the outside on foot or by bike, the cell service spotty making phone calls sporadic and incoherent. 

            “Any word from Montreat?” someone asked.  “You haven’t seen?”  Not sure that they would want to see, I showed them pictures, “Oh my God,” they said covering their mouth, a tear welling up in the corner of their eyes.

            “Has anyone heard from Blue Ridge Assembly?”

            “The Police Chief stopped by.  It’s been cut in half.”

            A car passed by. Sitting on the porch we looked up wondering what was so urgent an errand to burn the fuel, and meanwhile the helicopters hovered overhead.  A siren signaled another search and rescue as the Fire Department set out.

            “The things I have heard from the first responders I will never share with anyone.” I hear from a stout and hardened lifelong resident, his long beard hanging down to his chest, his face long, worn and exhausted from days on end without sleep.

            Having returned after Covid for the first time in a few years we drove through town.  New construction replacing old homes, new builds clinging to the sides of mountains, duplex’s crammed in close quarters to neighbors, yet the same roads, same clustered power lines, same weeping water main in all the old worn spots.

            “How is the town holding up with all this growth?”

            “It is breaking us.  The infrastructure is crumbling and we can’t keep up.  I worry about a disaster.”

            Now three years removed I sit with the same friend on his porch hearing tales of a water system destroyed, bridges washed away, power lines lay serpentine on sidewalks, roads picked up and shifted, without erosion control banks washed away, without water retention the creek ran unchecked.  The emergency generator for the town having run for 5 minutes before shutting off, the back up generator flooded out.  Without power gas pumps shut down, without internet the same pump cannot simultaneously sell you gas and inundate you with nonsense commercials, and without card readers all business stopped.

            The little country food store on the corner selling warm beer at ½ price, or for a simple IOU, “I know you’re good for it, honey,” says the lady wearing pajama pants and a shirt that says “adulting” with a thumb’s down emoji, her cigarette burning in the ashtray outside the door.  Other mom and pops store passing out groceries telling those gathered to pay when they can.

            News I hear on the porch is that I-40, the most direct route in, is down for a few more days from a mudslide at the continental divide, cars rolled up like crushed foil filled with mud and buried.  The people that were in it…?

Weeks, they say, for the water to return.  But in truth, no one knows with the table level so high they haven’t accessed the full damage.  Electricity, who can say. 

“Everyone who can leave, needs to leave.”

            That was the state of that.  “But tell me,” – a pause – “I hate to ask, but we have heard reports of looting…”

            “So far Black Mountain, not so bad.  But Black Mountain is a municipality with its own police department.  Swannanoa, well, that’s county.  What are the Sheriff’s up to right now?  They are overwhelmed identifying bodies.  There isn’t enough manpower for search and rescue, body ID, and to police. 

“Swannanoa was hit hard.  Hard.  People are desperate there.”

            Back downtown an older couple, seemingly from another era, as if returned from the great depression, with patched up clothes and weathered skin worn thin walked 4 miles into town from around North Fork, climbing over trees, and stepping over downed lines.  “Ran out of water.” So they came in to get a meal, try to find a way to charge a phone and get the message out that they were ok.  They left after an hour to walk back carrying a rationed 2 water bottles each.

            “It’s like a farmer’s market meets a disaster,” as people drift through like scattered leaves, and sitting on the bank by the truck witnessing a whole town revealed, its subcultures having always made it an interesting place.  ATV’s with chainsaws in the back rolling by now, a mountain biker cycling in, people on the corner holding up peace signs to passersby’s, a family with a stroller.  People meeting each other with handshakes and hugs, one in oil stained Carhart’s and steel toes, the other in runner shorts and a hydration pack, unlikely acquaintances one would think seeing them as they shake hands and hug, “How are you brother?”

“Tired.  A good tired.  Getting work done.  Cut the neighbors out of their house.  You make out ok?”

            “You look like you could use a massage,” says a lady in a flowing dress and a few dread locks, energy stones hung around her neck.  She is living out of her hatchback and has made a camp in the church parking lot.  She has set up a yoga mat on a pic-nic table and is giving out free massages.  It’s what she can do.  Is she from around there?  Oh-no, passing through, trying to help, got caught in the storm.  “So how about that massage?”

            Not yet.  36 hours now without sleep.  Little food since what seemed another life at a galla in a town 400 miles and another world away.  Only coffee and a hand full of oats for breakfast.  But the body was in a state of survival.  Under stress it didn’t crave food, or sleep even, an interesting adaptation from our primitive beings.

            A mom stops by the little free exchange library and puts a bottle of water and some granola bars inside as people begin to gather in the town square for the first public meeting, and you can hear them as they share their stories, hands over mouths, tears in eyes, some laughing, some nodding, some hanging their heads.  People are starting to get word now on how things faired in Ridgecrest, Allen Mountain, Padgett Town, and those along Flat Creek.

            Then at 3:00 the first public meeting begins.  The police chief standing on a picnic table with his hands cupped to his mouth as hundreds strain to hear.  There seems to be no playbook for this one.  Nothing that says, “When conducting a town meeting in a natural disaster you will need a bullhorn.”  But we stay put, some relaying information on to the back.

            “He says they are working hard,” they yell.

            “Anything about water?”

            “Nope, just that they are done with search and rescue.”

            “Let us know when he says something about water.”

            “If you will be quite…”

            “He just said something, sounded like water.”

            “What did he say?”

            “If everyone will…”

            And so it went.  But let us extend some grace, because they were not only in a hurricane, but they were that little town’s first line of defense, because they had not slept in three days, because they had left their families to fend for themselves so that they could protect and serve.  It is easy now to say where the fault may lie. 

“How could we not be prepared for this?”

“Did they not see it coming?”

What happened there was unimaginable, and no one was prepared for what they could not fathom, and to prepare would have been decades worth of engineering projects reinforcing landscapes and allowing water retention, burying power lines and widening roads, and even then there is no telling what would have worked.  The outpaced growth, the deferred infrastructure projects like so many towns, were now revealed by an overwhelming natural force. A “1000 year storm,” they say, but we all know. Times are changing.

And so we extend grace, for no one will ever know to what extent the town worked and what they sacrificed, putting the needs and lives of those in they serve above their own, enduring 76 plus traumatizing, heart wrenching, sleepless hours, to then address an exhausted, also traumatized and uncertain citizenry while trying to convey confidence that “Help is on the way.”

A bullhorn comes running through the crowd. “Help is on the way, and we will get through this and come out stronger,” they say, the now clear voice echoing off the vacant buildings.

And it was true, as we were on the cusp of a major shift from survival to recovery. 

The crowd dispersed as we made our way to the brewery where another band of the town’s people gathered, and the local restaurant owners having cleared out the coolers and reefers cooking up their wares for lines of people.  The brewery was serving warm beer for donations. 

I popped a 50 in the jar, the best pale ale I ever had, and sat back and watched the people laughing, telling jokes, recounting grueling telling’s with a sense of humor and optimism.  A group rolling in from Lynch Cove covered in saw dust from hacking away at the mess up there.  Handshakes and hard worn smiles, a sun setting off down the valley as the first military helicopters flew in.  No longer a local, just another guy with a history there and some property that was damaged by a tree, feeling a bit on the outside of community that had just endured an unrelenting struggle together, I sat back and watched from the corner.  Feeling the place in me again, and knowing that they will be ok.  This little town, it’s going to be tough, but together they are going to make it.