Hurricane Helene Visits Marshall, North Carolina

Thursday, September 26, 2024
         In Marshall talking with Joel and Josh. Very real concerns about the river, which is at ten feet, fierce, and rapidly rising. The island is already under water. At fourteen feet the river would be in town. At nineteen feet there would be extensive flooding and costly repairs.
         Our niece Jody arrives at the house. She’s going to do a soap-making tutorial with Leslie for the weekend. We lose power later this evening and with it our water. Cell and internet are also out.
         My concern is the wind. The ground is saturated from three days of rain. A windstorm could bring down thousands of trees lining our driveway, the road into town, and the forests that make up 73% of the land in Madison County.

Friday, September 27
        The river crested early this morning at twenty-seven feet, four feet higher than the previous record set in 1916. Yesterday’s concerns are facing today’s reality — the town’s total destruction.  The wind never materialized at the house. It’s still raining. Our friend Maia has joined us after being evacuated out of Marshall.

        We pile into our car and drive down Little Pine, thinking we’ll go into Marshall. We’re stopped before we get to the Redmon bridge. Neighbors are lining the road looking at the river, which has become one with the road. Fuel tanks, giant tangles of PVC piping, shipping containers — swept away.
         We turn around and drive down Anderson Branch to Barnard. There, worse. Over five feet of water covers the road. Ronnie Meadow’s house inundated. Neighbors wading waist-high water to get his prescriptions and photographs.
         Stop at Paul and Laurie’s and get water from their spring. Go home and start cooking and the power comes on. Internet and cell service spotty.

Saturday, September 28
         Drive down to Barnard to see if we can get out, and do. Stop at the bridge. Meet some neighbors, make some pictures, come home. Chris, Maia’s boyfriend, got in from Atlanta. We make supper.

Sunday, September 29
         A first look at Marshall. The mud. Everywhere, impossible to avoid. Heavy, sticky. The kind of mud that sucks you in and holds you close. The beginnings of debris piles. Submerged cars and trucks. Rubble where buildings once stood. Stores and restaurants where we’d visited just days before, windows broken, spewing mud from their orifices. And the smell, a mix of water and mud, and propane, a general sense of toxicity.
         This is the fourth hurricane related flood I’ve photographed in the last twenty years — Katrina in New Orleans, Hugo in South Carolina, Floyd in Eastern North Carolina, and now, Helene in my backyard.
         There are similarities between the four. The mud. The displaced buildings and houses and subsequent debris fields. People’s faces and eyes, at once unbelieving and resilient.
         But this is different. It is home, it is friends, neighbors, it is music and dancing, it is church if you want, art most everywhere, eccentricity abounding. It is gone.
         I see Morgan, in the midst of mud and debris. Forlorn. No doubt realizing she’s lost her job to the flood. We hug. I move on.
         The uniqueness of each building has taken on a sameness of look. Broken windows, water lines above the doorways, stuff beginning to line the street — books, chairs, a sewing machine, an elk head, furniture, boxes of dripping files in front of a lawyers’ office — and mud.

Monday, September 30
         For many people, town residents and storeowners, this is a first look at the town, their places of business, their homes. The shock is palpable. The enormity of the destruction incomprehensible and impossible to accept. There’s tears, many, and embraces. What else to do? It’s a reckoning of what once was and what it has become in the blink of an eye. And what lies ahead.

         Western North Carolina has long been considered a climate haven. The Southern Appalachian mountains are among the oldest on earth and they offer protection from tornados and hurricanes and other natural disasters. We’ve had floods and landslides in the past, and memorable snowstorms, droughts, and fires. But Helene was unique and has been termed a “geological event” because the accompanying flooding, landslides, and tree damage will have a lasting impact on the landscape. It certainly has had a lasting impact on Marshall and the twenty western counties of North Carolina.
         I walk through town for three or four hours, making photographs, talking to friends and neighbors. I think about shoveling mud, but feeling how dense and heavy it is, I realize that it’s a heart attack waiting to happen. I’m clearly the oldest person out there and the work is for the young.
         I went to check on my books — 450 copies of my new book, Little Worlds —that were stored in a friend’s warehouse in town. The road in front of the building is foot deep in mud but seems firm at first step. With the second I am shin deep and locked in place, unable to lift my feet. John and Kirsten pull me out, sans shoes, which Kirsten pulls out by laying flat on the ground.

Tuesday, October 1
         There’s more people in town today, beginning the task. Some are clearing buildings, adding to debris piles. Others are shoveling and scraping mud. Some are salvaging what little there is to salvage. There’s heavy machinery and a steady line of dump trucks heading to the landfill. The mud remains slick, never-ending, clinging to whatever it touches.
         I talk with Jamie Smith and his wife who own the French Broad Exchange, our local used bookseller. They’ve lost over 15,000 volumes to the flood, almost their entire inventory. They’re older, of retirement age, and questioning a return. They don’t own the building and the owner is reluctant to commit to doing any repairs.

         At Penland & Sons Store, the interior looks like a giant has gone in with huge salad forks and stirred the contents — clothing, books, jams and jellies, fresh vegetables. Georgette takes me to a moveable counter with two baskets of my wife’s soap resting on top. The flood lifted the counter to the ceiling and rested it in a new location in the store, never disturbing the soap.
         With help from Todd I make it into the building to check on my books. It’s dark inside the warehouse, the floor carpeted with mud and water, tools, lumber. Two-by-ten boards have been placed throughout the building and we walk gingerly to the back. The pallet of books has been moved and is resting on its side in a puddle of water and mud. The covers appear untouched, protected by the cellophane covering. But when I cut into the pallet and pull out a small bundle of books, I see they are all sealed shut, only opened by tearing pages. Disheartening.

Wednesday, October 2 
          Staging ground has been set up at Nanostead on the Marshall bypass and it is immediately flooded with supplies, equipment, food, and volunteers. The volunteers are coming from all over and they are a diverse group — church groups, college students, elderly retirees, and county residents not impacted by Helene.  They don Tyvek suits with boots, gloves and respirators as there are concerns about the toxicity of the mud. They’re shuttled into Marshall in the back of trucks, their gleaming white outfits blinding in the sunlight.
         The town is a hub of activity. I’m reminded of stories about Marshall before the coming of I-40 and the bypass. Then, it was on the most direct route between Knoxville and Asheville. This small mountain town had three car dealerships, three grocery stores, two hardware stores, two florists (Sunnyside and Shadyside}, a library, the courthouse, countless attorneys, the jail, and restaurants and general stores.
         Now, the streets are crowded and dangerous with an abundance of heavy machinery — track hoes, front end loaders, bulldozers — all piling and loading a steady stream of dump trucks, some with mud, others with debris, and still others with remains of trees. Smaller tractors with scrape blades try to keep the mud at bay.
         Inside the buildings the owners, along with friends and volunteers, push and bucket mud into the street. The concern now is mold. A series of warm sunny days heightens the fear. Piles of soggy, stinky, just plain nasty, insulation and sheetrock begin lining the street.
         The mood is different today. The townspeople remain depressed and angry. But I also sense an adrenaline rush, a feeling of resilience and determination to rebuild. Perhaps it’s the volunteers, the added hands and young energy. Or the visible evidence of the recovery moving forward. Or how the town is working together.
         Food stands are set up to feed the workers. Water. Washing stations.

There is a town meeting every evening. An accounting of what was accomplished that day. How many truckloads of debris. The number of buildings mucked out. And also plans for the next day. Who needed what? What could be improved?
The town is shut down after the meeting. No power, no water, standing water throughout, massive and growing debris piles. Ghostly. Police patrol the streets at night. There has been looting.

Thursday, October 3

         After the storm hit and the level of destruction to our region became evident my ex-Catholic guilt kicked in. I thought my book, Little Worlds, which speaks of a worldwide collapse, had somehow caused the flood. I could hear myself in confession — “Bless me father for I have sinned. I wrote a book that predicted an apocalypse and it came true. I’ve ruined a town and the lives of many people.” But, soon, I realized that, unlike the federal government of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s imagination, I could not control the weather.
         But at the same time, both Leslie and I are experiencing survivors’ guilt; the knowledge that we faired well in the storm compared with friends who’ve lost everything. Yes, I lost a lot of books, income. seven years of sweat equity. But the books can be replaced. And a look around Marshall, helps me understand I’ve lost very little.
         Shooting portraits today. Square format, b/w. Tight. Faces. Some objects. The black and white takes me back to my beginnings in photography and my belief that color can be so distracting. The monochrome heightens the emotions.
         One of the real ironies of this catastrophe is water. The tremendous amount of water that flowed through town to cause this level of destruction. And now the tremendous amount of water being used to rid the town of what the flood left. Pressure washing — walls, floors, machinery, salvageable items.
         As I walk through town, doorways seem to vomit debris. The piles of rubble, cinderblocks, and brick remind me of a walk with my son through the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Sicily. Some of the twenty-five hundred year old Greek temples had been meticulously restored to mimic their one-time magnificence. Others were mounds of crumbling limestone columns, left where nature had placed them. Both here and there, in Marshall and Sicily, I see fractured memories of what once was.
         Cars looking like relics dug from a different era. A telephone pole perches over Main Street, hanging by the wires that it once supported. 
         At Penlands Store, Georgette and Susan and their families sort through mounds of water and mud-soaked pants, shirts, dresses, scarves, hats, belts, boots. Trying to lighten the mood of despair, I jokingly ask Georgette if she has a 42-long sport coat. She gives me the finger.
         My books have been moved to the upper floor of the warehouse, in the dry and out of the way. I can see them for what they are, and are not. What they are is artifacts, remnants of the great flood of 2024. The covers are readable, clean. What they are not is useable. The pages are glued shut, only opened by tearing. There looks to be 350 of them.
         

Friday, October 4
         The town is crawling with journalists, photographers, videographers, all looking for the defining image or story. Some are working with major publications or media outlets, others are rubber-necking, disaster tourists. All are afraid to get close, to engage, choosing to keep their distance with their long lenses and removed personalities.
         Volunteers are here in earnest today, hundreds of them. Arriving to Nanostead, the staging area, and donning brilliant white Tyvek and boots, heavy gloves, masks and respirators. They’re driven by shuttle into town and turned loose. Students from all over, elderly people here with church groups from Oklahoma, California, and Louisiana with memories of Katrina. A soul food truck operated by a family from Florida who stay a week and then have to beat it back to Florida to help with Hurricane Milton. The best fried catfish I’ve ever eaten. Other trucks arrive in regular fashion, bringing food, water, chain saws, generators, more Tyvek.
          Throughout the day I see people — hugging, holding hands, crying together, hugging some more. The look remains one of disbelief, confusion, anger, emotional exhaustion. Yet, people are here — together — mucking, hauling debris, ripping out sheetrock and insulation, helping each other. I see my friend Matt, a local building contractor, who sends a crew down to the Natural Foods store where they demo the sheetrock and insulation throughout the store in ninety minutes — a job that would’ve taken the owners days to finish.

Sunday, October 6

          There are fewer people in town today and I don’t stay long.
         Deb and Jerry Burns at Engine House Design are mucking and removing debris but already thinking about how to redesign the building.
         Jamie at French Broad Exchange isn’t sure what he’s doing. The buildings’ owner is not helping with the clean-up and restocking will be a long, slow and expensive process. But he loves the town and being part of it.
         Josh has a small crew pressure washing the kitchen at the Old Marshall Jail. I’m mesmerized by their movement with hose and brush, like an elegant dance of light and space. And for a time I dance with them, moving, seeking the right spot, stopping time.

Tuesday, October 8
         The town is humming with activity today. Food stations at Nanostead preparing for the noon rush. Downtown, mud remains the ever-present problem. Inside the buildings, pressure washing and sweeping the liquid muck into the street, where it will be piled, picked up, and hauled off. There is a sense about the mud that it will never go away, as if it’s been imprinted and will forever be a part of the town.
         There are some buildings, farther along in their rebuild, that have fans set up in their open doorways, drying the building and clearing the air.
         There are more volunteers, their gleaming white Tyvek soon to turn brown. They’re mostly young, many students, some from close by, others from far away. It’s heartening.
         And the Army has arrived. Probably a couple of platoons of men and women from the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. They, too, are very young, some not long out of high school. Fit, with shoulders and arms meant for work.
         I walk through town hunting artifacts. They’re everywhere. Still-life expressions of what once was.

Wednesday, October 9

         The Army seems to have found its purpose in the basements of downtown Marshall. In those tight, low-ceiling, airless dungeons, up to three feet of river mud has settled. In most cases the only access to the basements is through suspect steps and narrow doorways with no room for machinery.
          I have a long history with the Army. My father was a veteran of World War II and both of my parents worked for the Department of the Army throughout their careers. I was an Army enthusiast and went to an all-boys, Catholic, military high school. I considered a career in the military as a potential life goal. I enrolled in advanced ROTC in college and was preparing to enter the Army as a second lieutenant upon graduation.
         But change happens if you are open to it. I began reading a broader body of history and literature and hanging out with a more diverse group of people (teachers and students) who introduced me to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. A trip to Italy with my grandmother sealed my distaste for Catholicism and opened me to European opinions of America.
         So, when the 101st Airborne marched into Marshall, I was prepared to be resistant at worst, mistrustful at best. But change happens.
         At the Madison County Arts Council building, a crew of fifteen soldiers are gathered around the stairs and doorway to the basement. A group of six or eight of them, two mud buckets each, go into the dark, dank room and begin shoveling. The mud is thick, heavy with water, and stinks; a half a bucketful is almost too heavy to lift. At the doorway stands Lopez. He handles all the buckets, hauling them to the stairs, and handing them to two men above him who empty them into wheelbarrows. It is grueling, nasty work. They work in thirty-minute shifts, a fifteen-minute break, then back at it. It takes two days to clear the building.
         There is a side of me that is in awe of these young men and women — their focus, work ethic, stamina, and their ability to find the best solution to a problem and then just doing the work. At the same time I know that when they signed up for the Army they didn’t really have a choice as to what work they did. And I much prefer they are in Marshall, rather than in some far away place shooting up the local population and countryside. The whole town is thankful they are here.

Friday, October 11
         The river’s flow looks almost normal today. Nothing else about it is the same. New channels and sandbars. The river banks are stripped clean or a tangle of downed trees, miscellaneous debris, and a gelatinous mix of sand and mud. There’s a shipping container wrapped around one of the bridge pilings. Those trees that survived the flood are festooned with plastic sheeting and bundles of PVC pipe.
         The Army and the volunteers are back at it, but roles have changed. The soldiers have been ordered out of the basements by their superiors for fear of mold and toxicity. They’ve been replaced by the young volunteers.
         I wade into the warehouse to check on my books. They’ve been moved upstairs, safe and dry, and out of the way. Sealed shut and unreadable.

Saturday, October 12
         Al and I go back to the warehouse and gather the books into the back of my truck. We’re going to park them in our barn for some undetermined future use.
         I make a photograph of the books in the truck that speaks to me of the totality of my loss. The image filled with mud-splattered books — black and white and brown. In the corner, looming, is my head and torso’s shadow, the books’ covers living in my body’s trace.

Tuesday, October 15
         A late afternoon walk through town. Streets mostly empty of people, not the mud, which maintains a lessened but constant presence.
         Years ago, when I lived in downtown Marshall, in converted warehouse space on the third floor of what is now the Flow building, the town emptied at 5 o’clock. Dave, the town custodian who doubled as Santa Claus in the Christmas parade, would begin his walk through town with pushcart, shovel and broom. And Marshall would shut down for the night.

         This town closure, of course, is different. Involuntary. Streets passable but slick with mud, buildings open to the air, no power, the town not just shuttered for the night, but essentially dead.
         But I do faintly hear music and follow it to the courtyard behind the old Rock Cafe. It’s a small gathering celebrating Deb Burn’s birthday. There’s a chocolate cake, and music, and people dancing around a portable heater.

Saturday and Sunday, October 19 & 20
          It’s mostly quiet as I walk through town. There’s people, but not many. Thomas and Mark are washing and sweeping, getting ready to mitigate for mold. The Shadyside florist guy is stunned, everything that was inside his store is now piled high outside.
         The relative lack of sound, the quiet of the place, offers the opportunity to see quietly, without the urgency of the cleanup dominating most images. There’s time to feel the light and taste the wind, hear the now muffled sound of the river. There’s beauty in the stillness of the destruction, life as the river has left it.
         The roads are dusty now, the recurring mud dry from lack of rain. It’s been three weeks since the storm.

Monday, October 21
         A quick visit with Georgette and Susan at Penlands Store. They’ve torn the flooring out of the building and I bring some home with me to maybe use in an art project.

Sunday, October 27
         Town has become emotionally exhausting for me and I’ve been staying away more and more. The constant reminder of the loss of my books and the utter destruction of the town. Plus, the upcoming election has me and my friends on edge. We’re hopeful Harris will win but not without fear of a bad ending. We know Madison County will vote Republican.

Wednesday, October 30
          I’m not quite sure how he’s done it but Josh is having ballad swap at the Jail tonight. Balladry has a long and storied tradition in Madison County and the county, especially the community of Sodom, is considered a rich source for acapella ballad singing. Since Josh Copus opened the Old Marshall Jail as a boutique hotel, restaurant and bar, he has been hosting a monthly ballad swap. Six to ten singers, some with multi-generational roots in the tradition, gather at the Jail to swap songs and stories.
         It’s pretty much the first event in town since the flood a month ago and the symbolism is hard to miss — the community’s ancient tradition responding to the wrath of our most ancient river, the French Broad.
         It's primitive at the Jail, no food, a portable tap serving free beer, limited seating, highly emotional. Everyone is glad to be among other people. Hopeful. Closes with “I’ll Fly Away.”

Saturday, November 2

          Meet up with Jack Cecil from the Biltmore Estate and his wife and sister and do a walk around town. He is on the board of trustees for the Duke Endowment, which has donated millions to the rebuilding effort in the region and wants to do more. They’ve asked me to come to their monthly meeting and do a presentation about Marshall.
           We walk over to the island for a look at the Marshall High Studios. The grounds — the walking trail, basketball court, swing sets, picnic tables, maybe a hundred trees — denuded and gone. Replaced with debris piles, mountains of trees, and a heavy layer of sand. Inside the building — like every other place in town — but bigger, more complicated, very expensive.
          The dust. It’s dry. People beginning to worry about fires with all the downed trees, fuel.

Saturday, November 16
         The mud is mostly gone, not entirely, but out of the majority of the buildings and off the streets. Debris and dead trees remain a work-in-progress with any one day better than the day before. Many places have been pressure washed and mitigated for mold, swept, and open to the dry air outside.
         The town has been feeding on a shared energy to get to this visible progress and today is the expression of that bursting energy. Party is in the air. Not quite two months since the flood and Marshall is ready to cut loose, take a break from the doom and gloom, catch our collective breath and ready ourselves for the next, hardest push.
         My friend Lois, a fellow artist and thirty-year resident of the county has decided to have her annual found art fashion show. Lois lost everything to the storm—her home and studio, and every trace of her seventy years of life and fifty years of art. Her response to the grief of losing the physical memory of her life—make more art.
         I photographed Lois’s first fashion show at the Madison County Arts Council and many more since then. Funny, outrageous, creative, the shows take full advantage of the overwhelming number of artists in the community. This year is no different in that respect—a celebration of the power of art, and resilience. This year's theme — Tyvek.

Spring, 2025
         I think about Helene a lot. Was this our “Get Right With God” moment? Retribution for past sins? Noah? Or was it a random, freak-of-nature storm that devastated the western third of our state. Was nature humbling us? Letting us know that while we consider ourselves safe from most of nature’s fury, it isn’t a sure thing. When I think about the frequency and intensity of these natural and manmade disasters in places like Paradise, California, Maui, Hawaii, Gaza, Ukraine, Los Angeles, it may simply have been our turn. 

         The adrenaline wore off months ago, about the time winter set in. It carried the town through the intensity of the cleanup — the mucking and striping and pressure washing and mitigating. There is still evidence of the recent destruction — lingering piles of debris, or trees, or mud — but Main Street is clean, drivable, and gives the appearance of nothing being amiss.
         But peoples’ moods have darkened with the season; money to rebuild being the main concern. Insurance monies are slow to arrive and federal dollars that flowed quickly during the previous administration are being delayed or rejected by the current crowd in office.
         People sit and wait and get frustrated.

         Also there’s a shortage of sub-contractors with the entire region devastated. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, laborers, heavy equipment operators, all hard to find.
         Major questions about the rebuild of the town, which lost over a quarter of its buildings, and still lies in the floodplain, something that won’t change. And there is the very idea of the town itself — what is it, who is it for, how is it paid for?
         Marshall has been reborn in recent years. What had been the economic, political, and cultural hub of the county for many decades had mostly died during the 1980s and 1990s with better access to the outside world and changing demographics. The 2000s brought new money, ideas, and energy to town and Marshall and the county emerged as a destination for art, cultural tourism, and outdoor adventure. The flood changed all of that.
         Some people/businesses will leave. Some will stay. Of the original businesses in town, Penlands Store, Shadyside Florist, maybe Bowman’s Hardware, the VFW building, will stay. Every other business is new within the last twenty-five years and most of them are coming back.
         I continue walking. Often through town looking for traces of improvement, or not. There are places in town where it looks like the flood happened yesterday, and others that are open for business. I went with Jim along a stretch of the railroad track near Redmon searching for debris and was not disappointed. Same in the woods and field next to Ronnie Meadow’s house.         
         There are gatherings in town. Mal’s bar has opened for music a few different times and there was a big Punk concert at the Arts Council. The venues are unfinished, almost primitive, without plumbing, but offering a place to come together. Everyone is hungry for it.

Summer, 2025
         Was speaking with Pete the other day and we agreed that town felt different. And we couldn’t really say what that difference is. The physical changes are obvious, but beyond that, the emotional and attitudinal shifts areharder to identify. It seems the overall, never-ending need for money is dwarfing the strong sense of community that existed before the flood. And the uncertainty of what is coming next, knowing Marshall will be altered, possibly shattered beyond repair.

         As I’m finishing this essay, I must acknowledge several of the catastrophes that have hit the nation since Helene devastated our region. Fires in Los Angeles and Maui, tornados in the Midwest and Plains, another flood in eastern North Carolina, and the unprecedented high-water disaster in Texas.

         Storms are growing in frequency and intensity, with devastating effects on people, the natural world, and property. How to reverse course? How to rebuild? How will governments and insurance companies pay for ever-more-costly reconstructions? Our current national government seems intent on removing itself from the responsibilities of emergency management, leaving it up to the states who can’t afford the costs to clean up and rebuild.

         Marshall and our neighboring town of Hot Springs are rebuilding, slowly. People are supportive. Music is regularly happening and a couple of restaurants are open. During the day the streets are busy with construction workers —carpenters, plumbers, electricians —putting the towns back together.          There is no safe place. All of us are vulnerable; some people much more than others, but there is no hiding from the fact that we live in a deteriorating global environment. And as the scientists have predicted, it will only get worse.

About the Author/Photographer

Rob Amberg has photographed and written about western North Carolina since moving there in 1973. Internationally published and exhibited, his photographs are represented in numerous public and private collections. Rob has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Center for Documentary Studies, and others. His books include Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers (2007); The Living Tradition: North Carolina Potters Speak (2009); and his Madison County trilogy: Sodom Laurel Album (2002), The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia (2009), and Little Worlds (2024). Books and prints are available on his website: robamberg.com.  Amberg lives in Madison County, North Carolina.

Donations for Marshall’s recovery can be made to:
The Madison County Arts Council
The Downtown Marshall Association

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• fAppalachian Studies
• fEnvironmental Studies
• fDisaster and Relief
• fGeography
• fRural Studies