You’re reading this later than I had intended. It’s what happens with no internet and biblical flooding. It’s also what happens when your summer stay in Western North Carolina turns into an ironic hurricane extension of Helene that had ravaged the Tampa Bay area. It’s like fleeing Hiroshima to head for Nagasaki.
The area in and around Asheville, NC is lush, mountainous and dotted with placid, bucolic rivers and streams. It’s where Florida visitors head to enjoy the aesthetics and escape the humidity and hurricanes. But now this: Large, uprooted trees blocking streets, crushing cars and damaging homes. A devastated River Arts District. Mudslides and flooding all but wiping out small, quaint nearby towns that once looked like movie sets from bygone days. Problematic conditions for water, power and cellular service are a given. As are tanker-truck and chain-saw ambience.
President Joe Biden, Gov. Roy Cooper and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell came in for a flyover first-hand look, and the Black Hawk-helicoptered National Guard and 1,000 U.S. Army troops were on the scene to help with supplies and search and rescue. The more mountainous areas used mules. A Fire Dept. City of New York truck became a familiar sight. More than two dozen North Carolina counties were designated major disaster areas, and more than 40 died in Asheville’s Buncombe County.
The New York Times put a blindsided-Asheville photo on page one, above the fold. This was Katrina-esque sans George W. Bush and (“Heckuva Job”) Brownie. “(President Biden) understands that this is a catastrophe that far exceeds any local government, or even state government’s ability to recover from on our own,” underscored Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer.