In Western NC, Helene rattles the faith of some while others vow to rebuild

Margie Derwort’s friends told her to flee her home during Tropical Storm Helene, worried that the two-story red house the 81-year-old has lived in for almost five decades would be inundated by the heavy rains.

But Derwort and her son, Michael, stayed. They watched as muddy water ran down the steep slope behind the house, running around both sides of it into the front yard.

Then came the knock at the door. It was one of their neighbors, Michael Derwort recalled, clad only in sweatpants. The man was soaking wet and distraught, saying he couldn’t reach his wife.

It quickly became clear that the home next door, set some ways back from the road, had collapsed in a landslide. The man, who had been downstairs, had somehow been bounced out of a window. After drying off and being given a hoodie, Margie Derwort said, the man quickly moved on to check in on other neighbors.

His wife, who had been upstairs, was killed. A Polk County spokeswoman confirmed the woman’s death to The News & Observer but did not identify her.

Everyone in Western North Carolina has a story about how they fared during Helene, which wreaked devastation across the region almost two weeks ago.

In the wake of that storm, some have decided that if they could weather Helene, they can weather anything. Others are shifting the other way, rattled by Helene’s torrential rains and the flooding and hundreds of landslides that followed, leaving wide swaths of the region without basic services like cell signal, electricity and water for days.

Margie Derwort is in the latter camp, keenly interested in selling her home on U.S. 176 about four miles east of Saluda’s downtown after Helene’s impacts came so close.

“I am scared now. I need to leave if I can sell it. I need to do that,” Derwort told The News & Observer on Monday.

Derwort’s age is part of her thinking, as is her son’s health. Michael is still coping with the effects from a battle with colon cancer.

‘A mess’ outside of Saluda

When a reporter approached, Derwort and Michael were sitting on their front porch with a friend.

They had just returned home after six days in a nearby inn, taken into downtown Saluda by the National Guard after the worst of Helene passed through. The yard around the slightly raised porch was still squishy to the step, and the power wasn’t back on inside the house yet.

Margie Derwort said the home has a “bad history” and described how her husband had been killed about 20 years ago when a tree fell on his car nearby.

As badly as she wants to leave, the Derworts can’t afford to just pick up and go. She needs somebody to buy her current house first

“You don’t know what to do or which way to turn. Finances aren’t where you can just go out and make a change, I’d have to sell the house. Now, how long will it take me to sell it? I can’t move without money,” Derwort said.

About 400 feet to the west, where the home had collapsed, a gate was pulled shut. A hand-written sign was laced through the iron bars, black letters traced with orange highlighter reading, “DANGER No Trespassing!! Mudslide in Progress.” Large chunks of debris had collected in a stream bed along that home’s property line.

“This is a mess,” Michael Derwort said.

U.S. 176 is closed just to the east of the Derworts’ home. The road is damaged in several places by landslides from above, while shelves of asphalt dangle over the North Pacolet River in other places, the earth that was supporting them washed away.

Rapid response in a mountain retreat

About a mile down that road is a long, steep driveway that wends past two waterfalls before ending at a home overlooking U.S. 176 and the river below.

Michael Bell has lived at the top of that driveway for about nine months. He moved there from Los Angeles, seeking to escape the chaos and crowds of the city.

Like many others in the region, Bell admits that he did not expect that Helene would be so severe.

“I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t think that the rain was going to hit as hard as it did,” Bell said Monday While one work crew dug in the soil around his front door and another spread gravel at the base of his 1,900-foot driveway.

As Helene passed over the 30-acre property on Sept. 27, Bell walked down to the uppermost waterfall, one short hill down from his house. There, he saw the normally relaxing falls gushing, black water flying off of the mountain side to meet water flying off the mountain in two other places just to the east.

“I never saw something more disgusting in my life,” Bell said.

Debris carried in that water clogged a culvert at the bottom of Bell’s driveway. That led to significant erosion of the driveway, which along with downed trees would leave Bell stranded at the top of the hill for days after the storm.

Bell returned to the house and noticed that the wind was starting to roar. Trees in the forest around the house were tilting in the gusts, some toppling over.

Then, Bell said, a red oak toppled over and slammed into the roof. The mature tree miraculously did not break through, but its weight was braced against the roof.

Bell scrambled as soon as the storm passed over, taking his chainsaw and cutting an A-shaped notch into the log to ease the weight that was resting on the roof.

Asked if he was worried about his safety at any point, Bell said, “I was so caught up with just trying to save the structure and everything else, there wasn’t really time for that.”

The tree cracked an eave inside, but it didn’t cause any leaks or more significant damage.

In the days that followed, Bell rewired his well so he could power it with his generator and draw water from it. It would take nine days for power to be restored.

As the sound of the work crews’ heavy machinery buzzed around him, Bell sounded a defiant note. Having made it through Helene, he said, his confidence in his new home was bolstered, his ability to live through any disaster there upheld.

“I don’t care what it takes. I’m going to rebuild and I can bounce back,” Bell said. “I can get through anything.”

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.