Opinion: Helene devastated my NC community. What I saw next helped me survive.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — I started this column in my driveway, typing in my notes app as my iPhone charged in my car. It was five days after our county declared our sweet, weird, gorgeous little city was in a state of emergency due to the impacts of Hurricane Helene.

For the first few days, most of us still didn’t have the cell service to find out whether all of our loved ones were dead or alive, to find out where to get drinking water or ice to cool insulin, or oxygen tanks or first aid, or whether we could flee if we wanted to or were trapped by downed trees and washed out roads.

It was terrifying to leave, and terrifying to stay.

Uncertainty and fear after Hurricane Helene struck Asheville

Those first few days were almost easier for those of us lucky enough to be on higher ground. We knew that we didn’t have power or water and that the cell towers must be down. But it would just be for a day or so, right?

It was once we started getting glimpses of the horror around us – swapping stories and iPhone photos with strangers in line waiting for hours to buy water and canned goods – that we started to understand what had happened.

We started scanning our minds for which friends and family we hadn’t heard from, whether they lived on first or second floors and how far they were from the rivers. How sturdy and high were the bridges on the way to them? We called and texted and waited and hoped. And finally realized our city wasn’t going to look the same ever again.

I am so, so lucky. My home was damaged in fixable ways and my loved ones are all safe and sound. Our power and water and cell service will come back. So many lives, livelihoods and homes never will.

This isn't supposed to happen in the mountains of North Carolina

What folks outside of our mountains might not know is, to put it scientifically, this is not a thing here . Sure, some areas flood – some even flood badly. But these waters came fast and quick and in places where the high water marks that would come had only been seen in nightmares.

The people who were hurt and killed by Helene – the many, many people – were not stubborn fools who deserved what they got. They are people who weren’t prepared because none of us were.

That includes our systems. It took six days for the county to announce a plan to distribute food or water. It took seven before state or federal supplies arrived.

But before the 26-foot waters had even crested, our neighbors were out in the streets checking every door. The queer, feminist, anti-capitalist bookstore up the street had mobilized their mutual aid efforts and had gotten the word out about what relief was coming.

The ramen place a few blocks up was cooking everything in their kitchen and handing it out for free for hours. The dive bar down the road had become a medic tent, run by folks in the neighborhood who offered everything, including the last Band-Aids in their pantries.

Folks left signs in closed business windows to spread the word about routes that were clear and how to change your iPhone settings to give you the best shot at a signal. The kindnesses have been so many.

How to help: Ways to support Hurricane Helene victims, how to donate

From Swannanoa Valley to Marshall, stories of fighting for survival

Over the past seven days, we’ve heard of couples climbing over balconies in the early morning hours after being woken to sounds of water lapping at their downstairs neighbors’ doors. People watched a home float away , like a dollhouse dropped in a river while the water spared others just a dozen feet up the road.

Entire towns have been demolished . Whole neighborhoods are swallowed up . We’ve heard of people swept away in the currents running through their quiet subdivisions in the Swannanoa Valley.

A man held on to a tree in Marshall for hours as he cried while onlookers could do nothing but wait. A friend’s daughter who was rescued from a rooftop by boat, because she confirmed with her landlord the day before she wasn’t in a floodplain and she figured she could stay the night.

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As a journalist, I find it particularly unfathomable to be deprived of news coverage when we need it most. But I also know this is how most people experience natural disasters – not glued to the news and distracted by the rhetorical flourishes of leaders trying to make sure history sees them as the heroes – but as people trying to survive their way through a tunnel with very little light and a lot of excuses from the systems they fund to guide them.

Opinion: Helene's destruction left NC election officials scrambling. Trump isn't helping.

We must remember the heroes – and learn from the systems that failed us

I hope every government official who was spared from this disaster will rethink their plans – all of them. We’re only beginning to understand the plans and systems that may have failed us here. But we know the people who will be hurt most as the waters recede are those who were already being left behind when the ground was dry.

I hope that on the other side of this we remember the heroes who risked their lives to rescue people who had no way of knowing they’d wake to a nightmare:

• The people who set out in boats through dangerous waters, or left behind their own shattered homes to help their neighbors rebuild.
• The people who drove for hours to pick up animals from a local shelter that would eventually be filled to the roofline with water.
• The local Sam’s Club workers who gave away every case of water in the place for free.
• The restaurant workers who didn’t take a moment to mourn the losses of their livelihoods but got straight into other kitchens to feed anyone and everyone.
• The guys who drove through the night from another state, rode around neighborhoods hollering “Y’all got water?” and unloading a case for anyone who even hesitated.
• The guys who spotted a groundhog clinging to a submerged barbwire fence and swam out to save him.
• The woman a block over who rode around on her motorized wheelchair collecting all the Little Free Library books to save them before the rains came.
• And, of course, the community journalists who have suffered through a week in absolute hell while trying to get out the lifesaving news folks needed ‒ even before many of them could see it ‒ and who will be holding power to account long after the national news media moves on.

I don’t have the right words – I never will – to capture the full spectrum of catastrophic tragedy and tiny griefs over all the little things lost that make up a city’s soul.

I hope what we lost here might save others from the same fate, or at least the hubris of believing we can wait to do something about a warming climate until the waters are already at our doors.

Donate if you can . Take care of your neighbors. And vote like it could be your town next. If you don’t, eventually it will.

Casey Blake is the senior Voices editor at USA TODAY Opinion. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @CaseyBlakeAVL

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Helene devastated my NC community. What I saw next helped me survive.