Eye on the hurricane

When Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina in September 2024, Jim Barton was our man on the ground, providing firsthand reporting from a place that many journalists couldn’t reach. While we’ve continued to report on the storm’s consequences, asking Jim to repeat his on-site assessment felt like the best way to mark the year that’s passed since rain began to fall on southern Appalachia.

“Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” was a phrase uttered more than once by my mom, born and raised in Eastern North Carolina. Though she was a generation removed from her ancestor’s experience of having to wait for the creek to come back down before it could be forded, the phrase lingered on.

One year ago, the reality of being at the mercy of nature—so familiar to our ancestors for millennia—returned in full force to hundreds of thousands of people in Western North Carolina. The blessings of the fossil fuels that insulate us from the natural world turned into a curse as the climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene devastated our region.

There were several immediate inter-related and cascading catastrophes.

• First, as one might expect, it was a windstorm, which heaved trees atop houses, cars, and roads. 
• Second, it was a rainstorm–actually, two separate ones within a few days that saturated the ground and dropped as much as 30 inches of rain in parts of western North Carolina. Tourist areas thick with restaurants, including Marshall (home to Zadie’s and the Star Diner), and Asheville’s River Arts District (RosaBee’s, 12 Bones), and Biltmore Village (Corner Kitchen, Red Stag Grill) were substantially damaged by floodwaters.
• Third, it was a massive electrical outage, with numerous powerlines downed and facilities damaged.  
• Fourth, it was a transportation crisis as numerous local roads were blocked by fallen trees or washed-out roads and bridges. Three of Asheville’s interstate highways–leading east, west, and north–were impassable for five days, five months, and one month respectively.
• Fifth, it was an information crisis. Just as we needed our cellphones the most, they went dead.
• Sixth, it was a water crisis as the city’s system broke down under the onslaught of water.

Each of these crises slowly resolved.  Most of the creek floods went down within 24 hours; the river floods receded gradually.

Cell service came back within a few days, and then went out, and then came back and then went out again. After 10 days, it was mostly back. Mine went down on day eight, as I was filing my first story for The Food Section about Helene’s aftermath.

Within a week, electricity had been restored in about half the region.

But those strides were shadowed by the beginnings of a seventh crisis–a longer and more subtle mental health crisis.

In the first weeks, people were helped by a combination of increased adrenaline and an outpouring of goodwill and mutual aid, described by Rebecca Solnit in her 2010 book “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.” They were also hindered and then overtaken by what many called “hurricane brain,” a complex mix of information deficit, information overload, survival guilt, and exhaustion, among other things.

Here is one example: Partially due to my last piece in The Food Section, I was invited to the Southern Foodways Alliance’s annual symposium, held in Raleigh one month after the storm. As I drove out of Asheville, I had a very unusual reaction to something I’ve been through many times before: heavy rain while driving. We’ve all been through this; we slow down, perhaps pull over with blinkers on. 

What was strange and surprising was my nervousness and jitters: things I hadn’t felt during the hurricane, when I was blessedly calm. Amid this mild post-traumatic reaction, I wondered what Facebook would look like when I next got the chance to see it. Would anyone else feel this way?

A few hours later, I got my answer. Dozens did, with reactions much more severe than mine–posters described crying and shaking. According to Laura Hackett’s reporting for Blue Ridge Public Radio, a number of service workers, on the edge economically, are still coping with mental health challenges.

Because of the damage to the water sanitation facilities and pipes, water for cleaning (but not drinking) was available in an expanding patchwork of neighborhoods within weeks. Still it wasn’t until 53 days after the storm that the boil-water advisory was lifted.

“In how many places in America do most people know what ‘turbidity’ means?” Asheville City Council member Maggie Ullman said, referring to the closely watched daily announcements of the water’s cloudiness due to stirred-up silt.

If the water crisis hit homes, it hit restaurants harder: food-and-beverage businesses can’t function, legally or logistically, without cooking and cleaning water. While large restaurants might pay $1,000/day for water, that option was out of reach for many smaller restaurants.

This contributed to the eighth, ninth, and tenth crises: cashflow and business interruption, insurance malfunctions, and widespread unemployment. 

As I noted in my article a year ago, Governor Roy Cooper’s request in a Oct. 3 press conference that people not come to Asheville was reasonable and sensible, but also spelled disaster for this tourist town. October and November are the highest income months for food workers here. Servers and kitchen workers save up money to tide them through the slow months of January through March.

While emergency unemployment and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–commonly known as food stamps–kicked in, it was frustratingly confusing, with some workers approved instantly, and others held in limbo for weeks.

Workers left town. While some decamped to the homes of friends and relatives—via Interstate 26 South, the only open highway—for a week or three, some just left town. A few days after the hurricane, I saw some useful stuff on the curb. Stopping to grab it, I confirmed that it was in fact being given away. It was. “I’m out of here. I was working at Zambra downtown, and I’m just moving to Greensboro now.” Just like that.

Not only did workers leave town, a disproportionate number of the talented and skilled workers left, according to Kat Fitzgerald of Regina’s Westside. In downtown Asheville, Rhubarb closed after its entire kitchen staff either left town or found other work.

Several of Fitzgerald’s’s new hires moved to Asheville from elsewhere and then decided it’s just not a fun place to be. Downtown’s Rhubarb closed after its entire kitchen staff either left town or found other work.

For the thousands of workers on emergency unemployment, the program mercifully lasted until April 1, when tourist season picks up. But business is slower. As a driver for locally owned food delivery service Kickback Asheville, I used to fill in quiet periods with less desirable DoorDash orders. Now, the bulk of my income comes from DoorDash, meaning I’m more apt to pick up hamburgers from McDonald’s than buttermilk fried chicken from HomeGrown.

One measure of tourism is the 6% hotel tax. Leaving aside the politically controversial question of who gets to spend the income on what, it is down. The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority collected $9.1 million in the first quarter of 2024; in the first quarter of 2025, it took in $4.1 million. 

(As for the source of that revenue, roughly 40% of the hotel tax is levied on short-term rentals like Airbnb, which are pushing housing prices up and food service workers out.)

This seems like a relentless torrent of bad news. While all of the above can’t be ignored, there has been substantial aid from the outside, and a continuation of the mutual aid documented a year ago.

I revisited a number of people I talked to last year. Dave Byers, of Diatribe Brewing, who’s dealing with the nation’s declining interest in craft beer as well as the local tourism slowdown, was pleased that so many out-of-towners came here to help out by spending money.

Next door, at Firestorm Books, I talked with Libertie Valance a few hours after a Firestorm staff meeting at which they reviewed the last year.

“It felt like we went from one crisis to another, with the hurricane followed by the election, followed by the inauguration [of Donald Trump],” she said. “One narrative might be that folks were more prepared for 2025 carrying their optimism with their experience of spontaneous solidarity…Another perspective would be sadness that the Trump crisis is not generating the same degree of solidarity as the hurricane did.”

Still, the long-term prospects for Asheville are good: It has thriving arts, culture, and food scenes; incredible scenic beauty, and recreational opportunities. One tiny town which contains all three is downriver of Asheville: Marshall, North Carolina.

I spent much of the summer of 2021 at the Banker’s Hours coworking space in Marshall. It struck me as a throwback to the ‘70s, in the best way. But I didn’t visit there for last year’s dispatch: The town was utterly flooded.

This time around, I felt a bit guilty driving into town on the cliffside road along the French Broad River. I wondered if residents had been beset by insensitive voyeurs in the wake of such massive destruction. Is there a way to be sensitive about curiosity following an overwhelming natural disaster?

Ground-coating mud had washed away long ago, but there were many closed storefronts, some boarded up and others open to the elements. Zadies, located in the former jail, was open and busy enough for a Saturday afternoon.

For those of us remaining, the next few years will not be easy: Property tax income is down, leading to service cuts. Inequality is rising as affluent retirees and those with remote jobs continue to move here, increasing the housing pressure on those with less money. Fitzgerald told me, “I’m in touch with my friends in New Orleans, and 20 years [after Katrina], things are still difficult there.”

Should you visit? Is the town ready? Yes, and yes.

But don’t forget to tip your server.