CHIMNEY ROCK — After staying the night at the Chimney Rock Volunteer Fire Department, Bruce Godzik woke up Sept. 27 to see the Broad River rising rapidly as rain poured down from Tropical Storm Helene.
He told his wife, Rebecca, to give up barricading their basement against the flood waters and come get breakfast at the fire department. The flooding already was too bad, and they’d lose some basement contents, but they’d deal with it later.
The river, however, kept rising. In 15 years, Godzik had never seen it so high. It continued to rush through the town, wiping out roads and businesses along Chimney Rock’s Main Street .
He watched as his house washed into the river, then fell to his knees.
On Monday, Oct. 7, over a week after the storm, what once was maybe a river, or maybe a road — it was too hard to tell now — was a mass of debris and destruction in the heart of Chimney Rock.
The only good news, of a sort: Chimney Rock Mayor Peter O’Leary confirmed there was just one death in the village from the storm, and multiple volunteers at the fire department said they had checked on everyone in the town.
Though Chimney Rock’s population is just 125, during tourist season, 8,000 to 12,000 people can be in the town on a given day, O’Leary said.
Godzik does a bit of everything in Chimney Rock, like many residents do. On top of owning Coffee on the Rocks, he’s on the Town Council and is an assistant chief of the Chimney Rock Volunteer Fire Department.
He was at the fire department Sept. 26, helping evacuate the lower-lying areas of Chimney Rock. He’d seen the Broad River climb high before, sometimes even creeping into his yard before settling back down. But when he went to check on his wife, she was trying to block water seeping into their basement.
They left to get breakfast up the hill at the fire department, leaving their Maine coon cat at home. Twenty minutes later, the water was flowing over the bridge and flooding Main Street. He told his wife there wasn’t time to go back for the cat.
Chimney Rock Brewing Co. went first. Highlands Kitchen and Bar followed. Houses, cars and propane tanks, spraying gas into the air, flowed through as the raging waters tore away at the ground beneath Main Street.
“We’re all standing there, a couple of us, just watching,” Godzik said. “We’re just like, 'Hold on!' We’re praying, 'Hold on to the buildings!'”
Godzik watched the roof collapse on his house before it vanished. Coffee on the Rocks tumbled into the river shortly after, the last building on Main Street to be swept away.
Since the storm, Godzik has been living in the fire department, continuing to help search, rescue and recovery efforts in Chimney Rock. His wife is in Orlando, Florida, staying with friends.
“We’re like a family here,” Godzik said. “This is Chimney Rock. We all live and work here. I have to stay here. This is my home, and the firehouse is the second best home I can have right now.”
Gov. Roy Cooper: ‘Western North Carolina is going to come back’
A month ago, Gov. Roy Cooper visited Chimney Rock during the Labor Day Weekend. He shopped at Bubba O’Leary’s General Store, named after Mayor O’Leary’s golden retriever, and ate lunch next door at the RiverWatch Bar and Grill.
On Monday, Cooper stood in front of the same buildings, which had been wrecked when the Broad River swelled to five times its normal size. Across the street was Gale’s souvenir and gift shop, which had been in Chimney Rock since 1947. Usually displaying knick-knacks in its window, it now was boarded up with a sign spray-painted in pink letters that read “KEEP OUT.” Next door at the Chimney Rock Gem Mine, the floor had collapsed.
At Bubba O’Leary’s, water had rushed through the building and blasted the front doors clear across the street. The right side of the building had collapse as piles of debris had washed underneath it.
The rebuilding of Chimney Rock will have to take into account the unprecedented level of destruction.
“It’s important that you come back in a way that’s smart and resilient,” Cooper told residents at the fire department.
Cooper said rumors that government agencies are blocking help are not only false, but detrimental to the recovery effort. With thousands of officials helping, he said, discrediting the teams working nonstop is demoralizing.
“We’re all in this together,” he said. “The challenge is … making sure we continue to be focused on this for weeks, months and years.”
Nick and Kristen Sottile, who own the Broad River Inn on Main Street, are among those in Chimney Rock looking to rebuild their business.
Nick Sottile said they’d owned the inn for four years, living in it for the first two. On the day they opened, a busy summer Saturday, he said, the community volunteered to help them out, bussing tables and cleaning.
That’s what Chimney Rock is, he said.
The building was severely damaged in the storm, especially the restaurant, Stagecoach Saloon. The mini golf course attached to the inn washed away entirely.
“Where hole No. 1 is now starts in the river,” Sottile told Cooper, adding with a resilient touch of humor, “It’s a pretty tough course.”
It’s places like Broad River Inn that Cooper wants to ensure come back, as FEMA aid reaches more remote places in Western North Carolina. Though Sottile said it was too early to think about the next steps, a local engineering firm has been volunteering its time to evaluate the safety of the buildings.
“Western North Carolina is going to come back,” Cooper said. “I feel very confident in that. Not only is it important to the people here, it’s important to our state. It’s important to us, economically, for this area to come back.”
Chimney Rock isn’t being bulldozed, and it’s already beginning to build back
More: Chimney Rock, Lake Lure before and after: Photos of Western NC towns after Helene
Though rumors have been floated that Chimney Rock will be bulldozed, O’Leary stressed that not only is the village going to be rebuilt, the process has already started.
Every person he has talked to, whether local officials or federal agents or community members, has asked the same thing.
“Their message is always, ‘What can we do to help you?’” he said.
Much of the village no longer exists, wiped away by the raging waters. But the process of rebuilding the road from Bat Cave that connects Chimney Rock to Asheville and the rest of Western North Carolina already is underway, O’Leary said. And in his experience, when it comes to natural disasters, the North Carolina Department of Transportation's response often is ahead of its own schedule.
Shop owners were expected to get access midweek to check on their businesses.
“That may seem fast, but the simple fact is, the reason we didn’t have a tremendous cleanup area is everything was washed into Lake Lure,” O’Leary said. “There’s nothing left to clean up.”
Officials will have a list of business owners, as well as residents of Terrace Drive, to keep traffic limited during cleanup. O’Leary said officials are using a Facebook page, Chimney Rock Village NC , to keep the public updated on official news.
An estimation for repairs, both a financial and a timeline, remains unclear. There is still debris to clear before reconstruction starts, a long process that begets reopening to visitors.
“On Wednesday, when they get in here, not everybody but a lot of these business owners are going to be going gangbusters to get open,” O’Leary said. “I’m very hopeful that some point in the spring, we’ll have tourists back in town.”
The first step will be a temporary narrow, two-lane road, which will be open to the public. Though O’Leary didn’t have an estimate for when that will be complete, he said it should be sooner than he originally expected. The main road will be built on top of that in what will be a multi-year project.
O’Leary said he’s satisfied with the government agencies providing aid to Chimney Rock, though he certainly would like more.
He called the response overwhelming: People have arrived to help from Brooklyn, New York, Texas and San Diego. Cooper was the latest official to visit.
But O'Leary remains wary of giving the government too much credit.
“So far, it’s been wonderful. We’re the top story now,” he said. “But two months, three months, two years from now, when we’re still trying to get everything rebuilt… that’s my fear — we get forgotten.”
Evan Gerike is a reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at egerike@citizentimes.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @EvanGerike. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Despite rumors, mayor says, Chimney Rock will rebuild from Tropical Storm Helene
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