Come Hell or High Water: Our Hurricane Helene Experience

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. All right, we're live.

Welcome back everybody. Hi. It's been a long time. It has been.

Our last episode that we aired last week was actually recorded on Labor Day. Yeah, a month ago. Yeah, so we had kind of held on to that. So we wanted to air a new episode and this episode is actually going to be slightly different.

Yeah. So if you don't really want to kind of hear our hurricane experience and that is totally okay, you are welcome just to skip on ahead to next week. But you know, I think this is just kind of a time where we wanted to share kind of an update on us and our communities, what our experience have been, and just sort of where we're at now. Yeah.

Well, and I think there's been so many of you guys that have reached out and checked on us, which is so sweet. And it's not something we ever expected. But we wanted to kind of be able to process this with you guys a little bit, if that makes sense. Yes, definitely.

And I really think, you know, we've kind of been in this survival mode. And I know that kind of when things start to get a little calmer, I think that's when it's sort of going to hit all of us. And maybe it already is hitting a lot of us. But I think, you know, it's really important to talk about it and just kind of process it.

And so, yeah. So welcome to our therapy session. I think maybe I'll just kind of start out with where our stats are right now. Yeah, I think that's good.

So currently in western North Carolina, there are 96 people who have perished. In addition to the 49 deaths in South Carolina, 33 in Georgia, 17 in Tennessee, and 27 in Florida. So as you can see, yeah, and Carolina was hit very, very hard. We want to point out that the numbers that are reported are folks that have been able to be identified.

Exactly. So we don't know what the true number of fatalities is right now. And that's for a variety of different reasons. But the most important one is, you know, respect for, you know, families and their loved ones.

And you know, you don't want to put out that you have 100 more. And this is a number I'm just making up that you have 100 more bodies for people who are missing loved ones to then, you know, panic and all this stuff. So there are lots of things are having to be done DNA. Because we're at the point now where any bodies are recovered.

It's been what almost a month? Yeah, we're getting close. So yeah, we're kind of just, you know, after a month of bodies being out, like they're not going to be identifiable right on today's the 31st, it's actually passed. Yeah, side note, happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween. Be a bummer on your Halloween. On your Halloween day. Yeah, sorry.

So you're good. So an estimated 42 deaths were in Buncombe County alone. So for those unfamiliar with these county names, Buncombe County is the largest in Western North Carolina. So we're Asheville sits.

So in Western North Carolina, there are still 26 people said to be missing 10 of those individuals are in Buncombe County alone. And again, might be differing numbers here. But after, you know, a month, essentially the search has really been called off in Buncombe County. Yeah, we're doing recovery now.

Yeah. So this is actually I pulled a direct quote from a New York Post article featuring Ryan Cole, who is the Buncombe County Fire Chief. And he said, and I quote, most of the time, somebody is not buried under the mud. They're buried under piles of debris, trees, houses, cars, all that stuff just piles up somewhere, like a bend in the river.

A mound of debris might be 30 feet high or 50 feet high. You pick the debris off piece by piece at a time. And sometimes those bodies weren't even found in one piece. It could have been multiple things that were found to create a single victim.

The hurricane in that's his end quote. The current came caused around 1400 landslides and damaged 160 water and sewer systems spanning an approximate 6,000 miles and destroying a thousand culverts and bridges decimated that over 120,000 homes have been lost. So the cleanup really is going to take years. And I don't know really what the long term ramifications are going to be.

It has changed the geography, it has wiped towns off the map. Yeah. You know, and then the impact of the things that we've seen. I told Haley earlier, I was really grateful that I didn't have any communication with the outside world because I didn't have to see what was going on outside my home, you know, because it was, it's really heavy.

And I know that individuals who live in other parts of the country or North Carolina who were witnessing this were really horrified. I would be too. Yeah. And worried.

Yeah. Very, very worried. So those are our stats. Those are, those are our stats.

They're not great. So we thought we would share what happened for us the day of starting kind of that day. Yeah. Friday the 27th.

Yeah. Friday the 27th feels like, well, simultaneously feels like it's been like a year ago, but also yesterday. I know like it's so much has happened, but we're also still so in it that it's, I mean, and to start, we knew a hurricane was coming. We did.

We were not, you know, we just, we live in the mountain. We don't get hurricanes in the mountains. We do. Yeah.

Like there is, you know, we've had a few storms over the years that have come through that I can remember that we're part of hurricane systems. And we're used to, and like even some of the places like that I'm really familiar with like Marshall, Hot Springs, Chimney Rock, those kind of areas were used to flooding. Like my dad grew up in Marshall, North Carolina, and he was telling me he's like, Oh yeah, anytime it rained the floods down there, like it's just normal what they're used to kind of thing. So even like those businesses were prepared for some flooding.

So they'd move their stuff up like they normally do when there's a major event coming through. But we had, we had no idea that it would be, and like, I don't think anything like nobody did. It's, it is interesting because the day before that Thursday, my son and I had gone to the DG, and we were looking for extra flashlights just to be prepared. I was like, what if, so when I think, you know, rain and hurricane, I think wind, and I was like, Oh, you know, we may lose like lights for a little bit or whatever, you know, so we, my son found headlamps and it turned out to be one of the best things ever.

And he was like, what about these? And I was like, honey, we're looking for flashlights. And he was like, no, this is cool. And it was amazing.

I think it was day two, like, I grilled via headlamp. It's amazing. Headlamps are the best investing in headlamps. Yes.

That's so what was that day like for you? Like what was that morning like if you want to kind of take us through? Yeah. So we actually, I'm going to take us back to the Wednesday before, two days before I, because I work in the public school, I work in high school, and we had gotten, we were kind of joking about like not being at school on Friday, maybe, because that's when like it was supposed to really hit us.

In my area, we were like kind of joking about like, Oh, we're going to be out for hurricane, like that never happens kind of thing. And we got an announcement from a superintendent that, you know, Thursday was going to be an optional future workday, and Friday was going to be an annual leave day. So no staff or anybody would report to the building. And I was like, that's kind of intense, like, that's a little over-dratic kind of thing.

But all right, so I went in on Thursday, just staff, and it was already kind of raining a little bit. The wind was low, so crazy. And I stayed, you know, we went out and we played with the goats, because of course, you know, we have goats on our campus. And so I went and played with goats and cats in the barn, and you know, did a few things, but we actually, our internet started going out, like just from all the wind and stuff.

So we were having a hard time, you know, even doing anything work-wise. So it was just pretty much all of us hanging around and just sitting around and talking about the weather like old men. And then we started getting worried that the flooding had kind of started in some of the places we knew it would flood. Like, you know, like I said, downtown Marshall Hot Springs, we were getting some word from some other places around and throughout different counties.

And so we were like, okay, well, there's really nothing for us to do here. So let's go ahead and go. Oh, so yeah, so we went home Thursday and for a high day, well, let's see, we lost power Thursday night. I think it was Thursday night for about, I don't know, maybe two hours.

And then it came back on, like, I mean, that was Wednesday night. I can't remember. We lost power for like a two-hour period and it came back on. And then it must have been Thursday when I got home that afternoon and my boyfriend who lives in an area that was expected to get, you know, a little bit more weather, better, actually stayed with me Thursday.

And so we lost power. I think sometime Friday, we got it Friday morning and the rain was pretty bad, the wind was pretty bad, we're just kind of watching the trees and hoping that everything fell on the house. But we lost power Friday. And then it just progressively got worse and worse and worse Friday.

And my mom, who works in a hospital, she had actually been mandatory to stay overnight Thursday night. So she had to sleep at her base. And we were texting each other Friday and she's like, okay, can you go get your brother to go be the cats at my house and, you know, do all the things at the house. So we were kind of dealing with that.

And I'm texting with her and then all of a sudden my phone just says SOS on it. So I had no cell service and we lost power so we didn't have internet. So we had no internet, we had no power, we had no cell service. Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully my water works without power, not in like a well or anything.

And our water system was okay where I live. So we were okay there. So we wrote it out through Friday and didn't really leave the house. And that was kind of, you know, the worst of it for us was that Friday.

And then we didn't have communication with the outside world again until probably Monday, Monday, Monday, I think it was Monday. So Saturday, I guess I'll just go up until we got communication again. So Saturday, we, I say we, myself, my brother, who I live with and my boyfriend who's staying with us, we loaded up in the car and we're going to try to go check in on his apartment. And we made it to like a few exits before we had to get off to get to his apartment and we couldn't get any further the road.

It was impossible. So we turned around and came on back. And then still no communication. My dad's working on a local fire department.

My mom's at the hospital. Don't know what's going on with any of them. Can't hear from them. So we loaded back up on Sunday and went out and we're able to, you know, locate my dad's team that he works with of other firefighters and paramedics and stuff and actually ran into one guy.

So you know who you are if you're listening, that when I rolled up to that fire department, that was we couldn't get to the main fire department, that bridge had washed out and going into that community. It was a crazy thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It honestly looked like a bomb had gone off. Like there were pieces of the road missing.

There were just debris fields for miles, like where people's houses had been picked up by water. And at this point, the water's receded from a lot of these areas. So you're just seeing the aftermath of all the debris. And so we saw all that all these, you know, transformers and power lines down everywhere.

We're driving over power lines. We're going under like falling power lines, trying to get in to just make sure that, you know, my dad was okay. So we got there and we actually just missed him. He had actually loaded up in a truck with somebody else and gone back to his house to pick up more of his medication because he was going to be there for a week or more, you know, how long at that point.

But we ran into this guy and they're like, Oh, you're from the podcast. I was like, yeah, he's like, your dad just left. He's okay. He's alive.

I'm like, okay, that's what I needed to know. So I found him. We went to find my mom, got really lucky in finding her. And that was pretty a wild scene to see inside the hospital.

If you ever tried to see a hospital work with no water, it's pretty wild. It is of what all they have to do. I mean, it was pretty crazy to witness. And we were just there for like a few minutes just to like, because she was not working in her role at that point, she was helping in the emergency department.

What happens when you have like a gunshot wound that you have to operate on this? So I learned what happens with that. So because you can't sterilize anything, that's not hard. So all of the equipment that goes in to be sterilized is sterilized and packaged.

So those packages are sterile. Okay. So you're able to use that. And then any equipment that you use then had to be loaded onto a helicopter and flown to another hospital to be sterilized and then flown back in.

Probably like Charlotte or something. Yeah. So anything major, they were diverting, obviously, because I mean, it was so crazy. At that point, they were pulling people out of mudslides.

So that's a lot of what they were seeing in the ER, where people coming in from mudslides and just some of the horrific stories that she heard and shared with me that just are awful. But that was our Sunday. And then we made it back home and didn't know when we would be in touch with them again. Or if like when they'd be back home, because they're both, you know, emergency responders.

So they're kind of at the whim of wherever the emergency is. So I think they were both, it felt like up there for almost a week. Wow. Before like, I mean, they're respective locations before we saw them.

And we finally got some spotty cells that respect on Monday. But I was very lucky where I live in that we only had like one tree down in my neighborhood. We had water. We had, you know, we only lost power for about 36 hours.

So a lot of stuff we were able to salvage out of our freezer. And then it just kind of got crazier and crazier from there. But I want to hear about your first couple of days before I get into the aftermath of what I got thrown into. Well, so kind of going back to that Wednesday, I picked my son up from school.

It was kind of a normal day. And then we get a text. So it started raining at that point. It was raining.

Ranged for days. Yeah, it dried for days. And we got a text that night from my son's school that said school's going to be closed. Thursday and Friday, because already the school is playing.

And so there's not going to be any school. Like there's, you know, so just know that. Well, I had taken off work on Friday. And I was supposed to meet with a friend of a mutual friend of ours, actually, for coffee.

And I was like, of course, of course, the day I take off work, the day my son's going to be out of school, because it's always what happens. Right. Right. And so I was like, Oh, well, all right.

So anyway, so Thursday he stays home with me and I work from home. And then in the afternoon, we go to the Dollar General to prep because again, in my mind's eye, it was going to just be windy and rainy. We may have to go down to the basement. Like if the wind got really bad, we're just like, you said, worried about trees, falling, that kind of thing.

So my son picks out headlamps, which is awesome. And you know, we get some like snacks, which yeah, my hurricane prep included a six pack of beer and two like snack items. Yes, we were like, let's get some Harry Bo, gummy bears, some peanut butter cups, and of course, bread, which the bread was great, smart, very good choice. So anyway, the next morning we wake up like normal, still have power at that point.

And we are sitting in the living room having a warm breakfast when at seven, 10, everything goes out. So we were like, okay, well, the power's out, but it doesn't matter. It's daytime, all the things we knew based on what we were told that the storm was going to hit around, I don't know, noon, like really hit our area and around noon. So we kind of hunkered down, basically.

So we went down to the basement, we kind of hunkered down, we were playing. And it was noon. And we were like, all right, well, here it is. I guess it's over.

And there was this weird calm. I don't know if you sort of experienced it, where it was like, queasy, windy and rainy, and then there was this like calm, and like, it was strange, it was very strange. But in its aftermath, we couldn't get out. So we tried to get out that day, and we were under a state of emergency.

And what I really didn't know, because I didn't have any communication, the only communication I had, my work cell phone worked. So I have two cell phones. One is a work cell phone that is Verizon, and one is my personal cell phone, which is AT&T. My personal cell phone said SOS, which so I couldn't use it.

And so I was like, great, I only had my work cell phone. So I was able to try and like, I was like, okay, let's get out. But I didn't know that in a state of emergency, if you try and get out, you could actually be arrested. Oh, I know.

Yes, it's it on us. So when you're under like an advisory like that, like you have to stay in place. I didn't realize that. So my son and I went out like trying to figure out like, can we get out?

All these things, no matter what we tried, we were trapped in our community. So my neighbors and I kind of got together and we all like cooked out things in our freezer, that kind of thing. We did that for several days. Again, on Saturday, we tried to get out, could not get out.

I really, the only way I could speak to the world was my, my work cell phone, again, very limited, very spotty. So Sunday, I called Haley's mom off my work phone. And she was like, Hey, I was like, are you okay? And she's like, yeah, I'm at work.

And I was like, is Haley okay? Because I was like trying to check on everybody. And she said, yes, you know, Haley's okay. And I was like, okay, good.

Mima, my mom was in the hospital with the water. So my mom ended up having pulmonary edema. Yeah, so she was in the hospital. And she was like, it's really rough up here without water and trying to figure out how things work.

And so I was telling Haley that Monday, we were finally able to get out of our community and kind of see a lot of the stuff. And, you know, there are things that we saw that my son saw that I really regret, I guess, like, you know, in our, I guess, haste to try and get out. There are some things that he's seen that he really talks about a lot that like really playing his mind that makes me feel very guilty as a parent. But also, what was I supposed to do, leave him at home?

You know, so it's like, I can't, I don't know what to do. And it was weird because I don't carry cash on me. I just don't. I should, but I don't.

And nothing was open. And the only thing that we're open, you have to have cash for because there was no internet. So you couldn't use the debit or credit card. Right.

And so I had money in the bank. I couldn't access it. I'd actually go into one of the banks that was open. And I was like, okay, here's a check.

Give me cash. And she was like, can't do it. We don't have, I can't verify you have money in your account. I don't have internet, like, sorry.

And I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you open? This is weird. And so there were like three hour long lines for gas and food, cash only.

So there was no way I could do that. I didn't have cash. So they announced that I found out via co-worker of mine that the local school, elementary school would be giving out food and water. And we didn't have water either.

So I was like, okay, this will be great. We'll line up. So three hours later, we get to the front of the line. All to be told, we don't have any water.

And I, then I was told by my neighbors who were my support system, like I, we couldn't function without each other that they had had it and they were going to go stay with family or whatever. And so I just started crying because I was like, I felt like I had to fight for every single thing that we had, whether it be food or water. I had money. I couldn't access it.

You know, like I was standing in line for food and water. Like my grandma talked about the Great Depression. It was the most humbling experience and surreal. And so we finally get to the front of the line.

And this we pulled on the window. This lady says, would you and your son like a warm bowl of chili? And I was like, yes, please. And so she hands us this chili and I am like crying over chili, you know, just like crazy.

And so the next couple of days were really, really hard because I was trying to keep it together for my kiddo. And also work. Yeah, I was working via my cell phone because that's all I had. Yeah.

My church was really great about like being able to like feed not just us, but the community. They had outback steaks that were going bad that they gave to us that we were able to like cook. And it was just, it was really uniting. It actually, you know, there were pieces of it that was really amazing to see.

I've never seen so much humanity. You know what I mean? Like kindness. My old supervisor texts me to make sure I was okay.

Old colleagues like friends. So many people reached out and it just really means a lot. And these distribution centers that were set up because when it first happened, there was nothing. There was really not a lot out there because people couldn't get through.

Right. We had a lot of flooding in our area. We were totally like cut off from the rest of like we couldn't get to Tennessee. We couldn't get to South Carolina.

We couldn't get to Virginia. Like it was all of our roads were gone. Yeah, and still are in a lot of places. Yeah.

And it's a strange, strange feeling. But like I said, once they were able to bring in some resources and some help, that was just amazing. And what a gift because so many people who were volunteering their time, who had come from Charlotte, from Winston Salem, from Canada, from Virginia, from all over, I met Linen, who were from Kansas City, Missouri. It was amazing just on the daily to see these individuals who cared so much about us and what was happening that they wanted to help.

And I always say, I think in life we become slightly jaded, largely because sometimes life makes you that way. But I tell you what, seeing this just makes me feel so proud of the human race. Yeah. And like I said, most people are good.

Yeah. I don't know. Something that I will say is how impacted I was by a recent trip that I took to the Asheville area. Yeah.

I was pretty blown away by the devastation. Yeah. So I went in the billboard area, which was very heavily flooded, destroyed, essentially. And so we went and we looked around that area.

We went around Swannanoa River Road area, and then we went into like the Tunnel Road East Asheville, like where the mall is and all that kind of stuff. And it is, I'm standing on Tunnel Road, which is a very like busy thoroughfare that takes you to all the stuff. It has all the stuff on it, the mall, the things. The walls, the wall greens, the wall greens, the goodwill, the, you know, some great restaurants anyway, the Target.

There was no way to get to Target. No, because that entire section of road is a whole, it's just a whole on the ground. It looks like a literal bomb went off. Yes.

I was standing on Tunnel Road, like physically, on my feet, standing there looking around at this wasteland. Yeah. And it was such a a mind-f. You know what I'm saying?

Like I couldn't get over it. It was just a real, I took a lot of photographs. We went to the River Arts District as well, and something that really, really struck me is the destruction is just so immense. But there was just a pile of rubble.

And on top of it, there was a little like cute little like 10 man you could tell, you know, and it said hope even when the creek rises. Yeah. And I just, I took a picture of that. And for me, that sort of just epitomizes it all, like amidst this all, the deaths, the mudslides, the horrible things that we've seen and experienced, like there is hope.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I can talk a little bit about the first few days, like post and kind of, because I was in, I was in a much better situation than Hollywood.

I had power back. I had water. We were originally told that we wouldn't get power back until the next week. We'd be out for about seven days.

We ended up leaving out for about 36 hours, which was crazy. We were extremely lucky in that sense. So I don't do well sitting still ever, especially in times of crisis. But it's like, what do you do?

So I went to my church and started helping out there. We were feeding people. We were feeding close to like 300 people a day out of the church, just for people coming around from different places. We also had college students because they were having to ration food because the trucks couldn't get in that brought all the food for, you know, our small college campus.

It's, you know, in our town. And so we were feeding college students. We were feeding, you know, athletic teams and just people from the community were feeding each other. So I ate many meals at the church.

And I think it was Tuesday. I was there working. And I had gotten, I got a text because we finally were able to get some text through once we were on Wi-Fi. We still had no, we didn't have cell service as of Tuesday.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, we know we didn't get cell service back until late, late in the week. We had. And it would go in and out constantly.

Yeah, we had, we were on Wi-Fi for probably a week, I would say before we got cell service back to be like out and about. So I had actually found a gas station that had gas. So I went and got gas really quick. I had a weight line, which was very strange.

We didn't line when I saw I paid my cash, got my gas and rolled on out. Were there cops there, by the way? Oh, no, no, just the regular people that ran the gas station, but everybody was packing. Yeah, like everybody.

That was also the crazy thing to see is like, yes, we're the South, yes, people have guns, but everybody was open carrying their guns. Part of the reason was because people were getting pretty belligerent. Yeah, desperate. Desperation was causing some problems.

Yeah, there were some issues, but for the most part, everything was okay. So we, I got gas and I got back to the church and I got a text from my principal that said, Hey, can you come into school? Oh, we've got to figure something out. And I was like, yep, I'm away.

So that's the first time I've been out of my town. So I drove to my school and met with my principal. And we were the first time I'd seen or heard from him too, because I was like, we couldn't get in touch with anybody. So he actually slept at our school because there was water there.

Okay. And electricity. So that, I think that was the first night he was going to sleep there. And he slept there for a week.

So we, all of a sudden this like crazy, like grassroots organization kind of came together and we turned our high school's cafeteria and then eventually expanded into our gym into a distribution center. And we were getting truckloads and truckloads of supplies from everywhere. I mean, people from like New York all the way down to Alabama and Florida and people that once they could get in, they brought all this stuff. So I became what felt like a manager at Walmart, very quickly.

And at that point, it took a minute for people to get in, but also took a minute for like the government services to get kind of set up too. So it took FEMA a second to kind of get in there. And I don't quite think FEMA was ready for mountain people. Is anyone really ready for mountain people?

No, because, you know, and I know there's been so much talk about like the government not doing anything for us. They've been, they've done so much. Yeah. Like I've met so many people, FEMA workers, National Guardsmen, like I've seen the helicopters so helpful and so lovely.

Yeah, like we were landing helicopters, like one landed in the parking lot of our high school. Wow. Like just shut up sat down and unloaded some things. Like we had trucks bringing MRU's National Guardsmen like helping us.

So like I'm not saying anything bad about the organizations. There wasn't frustration in the first few days, I think, as things were getting organized, but you know, we figured it out. But I just, I don't think that they were ready for like these mountain people because you know the government will come in and say like, hey, it's going to take us a minute to build your road. You got a hillbilly on a backhoe and they're like, hang on sucker here I go.

Yeah. And they're building roads. Like, get a hillbilly on a backhoe. I mean, I'm serious.

Like the amount of people that I talked to that were like, I mean, yeah, my neighbor had this bulldozer and he came in like cleared my road and then we just poured like some gravel in there and now we have a road in like six hours. Yeah. Like absolutely crazy. You know, and obviously they're gonna have to go back and like fix all these things, but like they're building like building temporary roads.

Just crazy. Like left and right, just doing the thing. People are out like searching like putting teams together. Yep.

Like, man, we can organize in a crisis. When in doubt, just grab yourself a mountain person in a backhoe. Absolutely. And we'll get it done.

Absolutely. Yeah. We'll tell the government here hold my beer or hold my moonshine. And we will do it.

That's actually not moonshine. I mean, hold my really strong water. Really strong. Hold my fire water.

Yeah. I'm going to build this road. I mean, there's so many stories like that. I'm just like regular people going in, getting stuff, people are drilling wells left and right.

Very illegally, but who cares? Helping people. And that's the biggest thing. Crazy.

It's been so crazy. So we served over like 1500 people in our distribution site. We ran it for almost two weeks. And then we closed like redistributed items out because we were one of the first places, us and some other places that had the space to handle the amount of donations that we got, which was insane and crazy and just the most amazing thing we've ever seen.

But we were so overwhelmed by all this stuff. So we had great volunteers that gave them help this out. But we then had to find like places for all this stuff to go because we had to come back to school. Like we had to get kids back in the building.

And we were one of the first schools in our area that were able to do that just because we were so fortunate in the way the storm hit. Yeah, your schools went that way before ours did. Yeah, we went back. Yeah, we I think we were out three weeks.

Yeah, about three weeks and we went back. But we had to find places for all this stuff to go. And by that point, thankfully, like other community centers and churches were kind of getting on their feet and were able to accept some things from us. So we were able to get it all out to other places and clean and get ready for kids.

But that is the most exhausted. I mean, it was 12, 14 hour days every day. I was so loopy and exhausted. And then you kind of cycle through this feeling of guilt for feeling that way.

And I really struggled with that a lot of I have no right to feel tired. I'm not the one out there pulling bodies out of rubble or cutting down trees or restoring power or anything like that. So and I really had to work through that with the people that I was around. So I was really lucky to be around the people that I was because everybody was feeling that.

I struggled a lot with I wish I could do more. Right. I was so limited. I have a young child.

Yeah. And there was nothing like I, you know, I felt like I took more than I gave, which made me feel super guilty. But I don't know. I think that I tried to tell myself like on the regular, I do give to people daily in what I do.

And sometimes it's okay to ask for help and to be the one who needs help. And in those moments, I had damaged and damaged my house, not trees, thank God. But you know, like I, had just so much blood in and just, you know, it was just challenging. And to try and manage all this with a four year old who was like, but why?

Like, you know, why is this happening? Why is this happening? Why is this and how it comes out of his play? And he's talking about he knows the word receded.

You know, and so like we were able to see when the water receded. And by the way, water in flooding can recede very quickly. Oh, yeah. I was shocked.

And how quickly that can happen. But yeah, I mean, I just feel like, you know, he knows a lot of stuff that I hate that he knows. And I wonder like how long term like what this will look like for him, how he's going to express that. But I will tell you, for me, not that I'm going to be a doomsday prepper.

But next time, I'm going to be ready. I'm going to have a camping stove. I'm going to have like charging block. I'm going to, I'm going to be a little bit more prepared because you know what, I was so ill prepared.

Yeah, we all were. Yeah. I mean, who knew? Who knew that this hurricane would just get a state or area.

And the amount of like, just absolute like there, like there's whole towns that are just gone. Yeah, like, and that is hard to imagine until you see it. And you're, it, and it's awful to see. And I don't want anybody to see that.

And pictures only do a certain, you know, amount of, but being out there and seeing it and the smell of, you know, river mud and of de-comp and like it's, it was pretty, pretty surreal. I cried many times. Me too. I cried every day.

I cried a lot. All different reasons. Working at that distribution site, I think is what saved my mental health. I cried when I hugged, you know, my coworkers that are more like family now and the first day back with kids in the building, I, I hugged so many kids.

All of them against their will. All of them. Well, it was one of those like, they were so happy to be back and be with their friends and see that, you know, their adults and teachers and, you know, I've just stood in the front doorway and just so many kids would come just run and hug you and you know, you'd see them and just like burst into tears and they would cry and, you know, what was so crazy to me was the amount of kids, high school kids that were at that school or like, at our, another distribution site that was really close to us every single day. Yep.

Working from, you know, the time we opened to the time we closed. They were there every day. Our athletic teams, like we're able to get together and, you know, like the baseball team would go volunteer somewhere. The football team went, you know, volleyball teams were going like from both high school and college level.

Like I worked with a college women's soccer team, came and worked with us several times and we just like, you know, tell them what to do and there they go. But the amount of support has been overwhelming and I know that people are frustrated that are bringing supplies into us, being turned away that we can't accept right now. And we are inundated. We are so inundated with supplies.

It's an incredible problem to have. Right. But I will tell you from the mistake that we made as distributions, I was taking youth clothing. Yeah.

And not that we weren't grateful for every single thing that we got in, but there are some people who I think, I don't think anybody gives anything to somebody in a disaster like in Mattless. Like I don't think there's ever any Mattless behind it. But when you're going through these bags of clothes and you open them up in the smell of urine, like knocks you down or gasoline or whatever, you just have to pitch the whole bag. Like you can't, there's nothing and that happens several times to me.

And so I understand why people are saying no clothes unless they're brand new clothing. Because it is just such a, and that takes so much time. Yes. Like to go through, to go through and to discarded and like, I mean, people were donating their used underwear.

Oh, I touched people skivvy's with the skid marks of, you know, and at one point, you just kind of like have to laugh sometimes because if you don't, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to cry. And like, honestly, I really don't miss hearing me that I'm not grateful for things, but I don't want to skip my underwear. I don't need the skid marks of underwear. I don't want to give that out to people.

So that had to go. But every once in a while, you just open like a bag of treasure and you're like, what is in here? I just want to say it's not a bag of jewels. Oh, I think it was all paparazzi jewelry.

But we had probably about our, I don't know, 57 that we'd all been awake and working this thing. That bag of jewels brought us so much joy. We were holding them out and we were looking at them and we're like, wow, this is amazing. Yes.

That's what exhaustion will do. It was we kept that bag of jewels for the whole week. And then some lady came in with, I think, a young girl, like a young girl and we gave her the bag of jewels. And she was also very delighted with the bag of jewels.

Who would be? I was like, man, I'm so glad that bag has brought some joy. It has. I tell you.

Well, and honestly, I don't think I have ever, you know, I will never want for tampons. Ever again. Baby wipes or toilet paper paper towels, probably for a long time. Long, long time.

I will probably be in menopause before I run out of tampons. I have been getting things for my students because I have a whole bin. Okay. Like plastic bin full of tampons and a whole other one full of pads.

Wonderful. Which is great. But I at first was hesitant to like stock that stuff for my kids because I was like, well, people need that stuff. But then there's so much out there that I finally got over it and I just did it.

But I got these plastic bins and I've just labeled them and filled them up with all the stuff for my kids because if you know, and I said this to somebody, I was like, you know, I put lists out every year for items that I need for, I run three different closets at my school. I run a hygiene closet, I run a food pantry and a clothing closet. And every year I put out wish lists of things that I need and I'll get like, you know, some people donate like one or two things, which is great. And I'm so grateful for anything that I get because times are hard and, you know, anything that anybody could give us is so, so appreciated.

But I'm still then left with a lot of holes of things that I don't have that hard for me to get. My kids go through deodorant like crazy, which is great because kids smell. Teenagers are stinky. Especially boys.

Especially boys. So I got through deodorant like nobody's business because if a kid comes in and asks for deodorant, I can't just be like, peer use the community one. So I have your pits and put it back. No, I have to give them the whole thing.

And I love to give them the whole thing because I'm like, please keep this in your backpack and use it every day multiple times a day if you so wish. So I have an entire bin full of deodorant right now. Great. That I have just scavenged and I call it scavenging.

So I'll go to the church that I attend is also distribution site. So I'll go after hours after people have gone through and gotten like the general public can go in and get what they need. At the end of the day, I'll go through and I just like scavenge little tables and I'm like, oh, that's a deodorant. That's nice.

Oh, that's a nice body. Watch them. I know a kid that I like that. And I just like fill up my little bag full of things.

And it's been great. And I may have been able to stock my hygiene stuff and it is going very quickly, which I'm glad that kids are taking it because it's hard. We don't want to accept help. No, at all.

I took home a pack of toilet paper out of one of probably about a thousand different packs sitting there at the church and I needed desperately needed toilet paper and I had a chance to go to the store because I've been working 14 hours every day and was exhausted and was at that site to pick up some stuff for a family that we didn't have. And I was like, I really need a pack of toilet paper. And somebody's like, oh my God, just take the toilet paper. Like there's 5,000 packages of it here.

Please take the pack and I felt guilty about it for two days because I was like, I could have gone out and bought that. And then I felt bad about it. But I've slowly gotten over that. It's taken me a minute.

But it's hard to think of yourself as a victim when you have this perceived notion that you've had it so much better than everybody else. That there's so many people that are worse off than I am. I don't deserve it. It was this weird when I applied for FEMA, right?

Because it said you are a survivor of the WNC hurricane, Helene disaster. And I'm like, no, I'm not a survivor. I was without power for, you know, right a little while. And I had to wait in line for gas.

I didn't survive anything. Right. And that's a weird, like that feels gross to say that. Yeah.

I think that it could have been like rewarded like we experienced. Yeah. The ramifications of the hurricane. We did survive it.

We did. Like we got lucky. But not even five minutes down the road from me, a house that's got swept into the river. There's a house on my street that was cut in half by a tree.

Yeah. Many, many trees fell on the houses around me. And I keep thinking like, oh my god. That was my first thought of just the way that your yard is set up.

Yeah. Because there's as big trees in your front yard. I was like, I was shocked when you said you didn't have one on the house. No, I was, I couldn't believe it because that's one of my biggest fears.

And I say, you know, my property, I have tons of dead trees. I didn't lose a single tree. It's incredible. I don't understand it.

I'm, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm also grateful. Huge shout out to Publix, the grocery store, which throughout all of this was open.

Yeah, because they were a Florida company. They sure are. They had generators. They were, you know, so once I was able to finally get to go to the grocery store, God bless my church.

My pastor's wife was like, leave your son with us, go to the store, go to the store, like do what you need to do. They allowed me to be able to work for a little bit here and there. So huge shout out to them, huge shout out to Publix. Like there are just so many people.

My neighbors were phenomenal. Just, you know, so like in all of this, I feel like, um, I got to hear from people in my life that maybe I don't hear from on the normal. Like I was just worried about you. I went to check in.

I had some really great conversations with some of those folks. Um, Haley offered to come get me. Yeah, I was trying really hard to figure out like, how am I going to get, because this is before I can get gas. Yeah.

I was like, how am I going to get to Holly? Do I get to Holly? And then I will come back. Well, first she said, can you come to me?

Yeah. And I was like, I don't think I can't. I said, I'm going to have to run the math. Yeah.

So let me run the math of mine and maybe we can meet in a midway point. But our midway point was probably destroyed. Yeah, it certainly was. And we could not have gotten to our midway point at all.

So I think I was like, it's okay. I'm just going to, yeah, I'm sold you're on. But I knew I and I'm going to tell you this, I knew that if worse came to worse and I needed her to come get me, she come get me, whether we're on a boat or whatever she figured it out. I knew she would have come get me and of all people, you know what?

It's funny. I probably would have been most comfortable staying with you, to be honest, because I'm very familiar with your house and your space. And you know, we know each other very well at this point. So it's not like your neighbor coming to say, oh, stay next door with me.

Like, it's just more comfortable. We were getting ready to like, get granny's basement and put you guys in the basement. We would have done it. Because that was my old apartment where we, this podcast started in my apartment.

It did. Sharing them like, um, because I was like, well, it has its own kitchen, it has its own bathroom, like, you know, bedrooms, like it would be, you know, bare bones, but make it work for a few days. So that's where like, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna go get her. I would have been so grateful and I know that you would have done it.

Like, I had no doubt in my mind. And I had a couple other folks, even that I work with who reached out to me and was like, we will come get you. I was like, I'm good. I'm good.

You know, but it's just the kindness was overwhelming. But I want y'all to know that, you know, as much as we share our experience, like our hearts and minds are still with the families who have experienced loss, whether they're homes of their family members, um, those who are missing like the most nerve-wracking, I think, experience to me. And I really didn't in the moment process it. Um, and I'm just now kind of getting to the point where I can think about it was the day.

Oh gosh, it was Wednesday, the Wednesday after the hurricane was when we started being able to try to contact, um, students to make sure we had all of our students accounted for because that was a very real fear in these early days is that we lost that we would have lost students because we knew that so many houses were gone in my county and we were not hit nearly as hard as other places. Um, but doing that and we didn't have our school phones didn't work. So I did the thing that I tell every social worker not to do, and what we tell all of our staff not to do, and that is to call our families off of our personal cell phone numbers. There's so many people that have my personal cell phone number right now and I don't even care.

Um, because I had a number. I'm going to be writing it on the bathroom walls for a good time. Call highly because my phone numbers out there. So, um, it's been, it was wild.

I was like calling people in every single staff member that jumped in did the same thing. Like we just, we were able, we had a list of all of our kids and contact numbers of all of our kids and we could get into our computers to find their numbers in the system and we were just calling and when calling it, we were texting like to try to contact was everyone accounted for by it took us until Saturday, but by Saturday with the help of horseback teams and the national guard. We found every, we had heard from or laid eyeballs on every single student in our school. And I think when that, like we had a list and on the board in our kind of like command center, um, and we'd put all the kids names that we couldn't contact the first round and then we do a second round and we could erase the names and then we do a third round.

We could erase the names and then it got down to where I think we had eight left on the board and we just started sending people out to find them. And then we realized that one family was inaccessible. So a team on horses went up and found them for us and then we sent a team from, we reached out to one of the national guard groups that was doing wellness checks and they found that student and to have, when we finally got word that we had accounted for all of our students and then to get the word that all of our students in our district have been accounted for and we didn't lose a single student. I burst into tears like just that overwhelming sense of dread.

Like looking at those names on the board and like, where's a small school? My school has that I work in. We have maybe 400 kids. It's a tiny school and so you know all these names and you know these kids and you know their faces and like I'm sitting there and I'm looking at these names on this board and I'm like, I don't want to think about them not being here and that unfortunately is a reality for several of our school districts around us.

You know, we were, our district was very lucky. Our neighboring districts have not been. There's been multiple students lost in multiple different districts and I can't even imagine. Knowing that like touching base with you know whether it be like Kaylee's mom knowing that Kaylee was okay or you know some of my other friends and knowing that they were okay and like laying eyes on them and knowing my family was okay was just like it's just you're right it's overwhelming emotion because you're sort of this painstaking you're really driven to make sure everybody's okay like I will find you.

I will check on you all these things and when you finally know that they're alive and they're okay it's this overwhelming feeling of just like you're grateful and you're happy they're okay but it's just like tears. Yeah, yeah. Like Kaylee said you know we had days and days of just like crying and crying and crying of all different reasons. Yeah.

So yeah. And so we've cycled through a lot of grief cycle. And a month there's been a lot of this month. It's you know and prior to this like I think last episode actually that we like I said we recorded on Labor Day.

We were talking about like fall and how much my son loves fall and we decorated for fall and I was looking at like okay we're going to go to a pumpkin patch and we're going to do all this. I know. Yeah. I yeah.

And we have done none of that. We have been surviving and trying to get back into some kind of routine. My son's school that was flooded he was never able to go back to so he actually had to go to a new school which has been very hard. So anyway I just I want some normalcy so I'm really hopeful that like Thanksgiving and Christmas can be somewhat normal as normal as possible.

Whatever that is. And so many of you guys we're going to wrap it up. Yeah. I know you're like oh it's so long.

But so many of you guys have reached out asking like how to help and I would say remember this area remember us in the next month or two because what's going to go out of the news cycle and something else is going to happen and we're still going to be dealing with this like we have been for the past month. This is not a quick fix. Our infrastructure is horrifically damaged. I'm unsure when like my boyfriend will have water because his the water treatment plant that he's on was the whole infrastructure was ripped out of the ground.

I mean pipes ripped out of the ground that were like 23 feet. Yeah. Yeah. Like ripped out of the ground.

Like they're having to bring in like the army engineers to try to figure it out. Dams break. Dams let go. Yeah.

And he is just. Dams are horrible. Yeah. So remember us in the next few months and a lot of organizations are out there that are continuing to accept donations.

A lot of people have been able to organize like lists of things that people need and a lot of that moving forward is going to be monetary donations for contractors and people to come in to build building supplies. That's a huge thing because we've kind of are out of the basic need. The need. Yes.

The big thing. We've heard so many stories of individuals who maybe didn't carry homeowners insurance and you know maybe FEMA can only cover so much of their home damage. Also I didn't really realize through this even if you carried flood insurance which very few people did. Right.