My Story of Hurricane Helene
Story
This story was submitted on February 5, 2025 by Athena Ackerman
- Title
- My Story of Hurricane Helene
- Description
- This is the first-hand account I wrote not long after the flood. Originally it was for the Appalachian voices class I was taking at the time, but now it serves as a personal record of my experience during Hurricane Helene.
- Place
- 171 Leola St, Boone, NC 28607
- Date Created
- 2025-02-05
- Extracted Text
-
My story of Hurricane Helene
From the third floor of Ceder Creek
I live in the apartments next to Walmart, the brown building with the porches and the garden. I've lived not far from Boone for a good portion of my life. The Boone Walmart is the closest Walmart to my family's house. I've wanted to live in that apartment building since I was a kid. I've wanted to go to Appalachian State since I was a kid. To make that happen I had to get my associate's degree at a community college first and then transfer to Appalachian State to finish my bachelor's degree. I remember the way it felt to sit on my porch and watch the garden in the morning, it was the perfect way to watch the sunrise.
The morning of the flood I woke up at four in the morning with a sick feeling. I opened my phone to the news that New Port Richey Florida had been hit worse than anticipated. My boyfriend and his family live in New Port Richey Florida. I texted his mom, and I prayed, but I couldn't go back to sleep. The feeling that something was wrong just kept getting louder. At five am the power went out. We expected that we live in an old building and my roommate and I were both used to life without power. I had candles and battery packs, we were prepared, and we thought it was okay. Around six am my roommate and her boyfriend woke up and we sat in the dark living room together. Then the sun started to come up, but dimly, there wasn't any sun, just light behind a massive storm cloud. I looked out and saw that the garden had started to flood. It was more water than we expected. I immediately panicked about my car and we ran outside to check on it. I stood at the end of the porch on the third floor of the Ceder Creek apartment buildings and I saw my Gray Rav Four already halfway swallowed by the water. It was too late, there was nothing I could have done, but I sometimes still dream I'm inside that car as the water beats against the windows.
We went back inside then and waited. I called my mom, I didn't know it would be the last time I'd be able to get in contact with her for roughly forty-eight hours. I laughed hysterically into the phone. I wanted to tell her how scared I was, trapped in that apartment building, suddenly with no car and no idea when the water would stop, but they live in Newland North Carolina right next to a creek. I was scared if I said anything the water would rise up and swallow them like it swallowed my car. By ten am the water had risen so high it had swallowed everyone else's cars too and almost the entire first floor. They tried to evacuate the first floor but people were still fighting to get out. They came for the second floor then and then us up on the third floor. I've always been anxious and prepared for the worst and always been able to live out of a backpack. So I had a go-bag ready and the silliest outfit you've ever seen on a flood victim. I wore muddy sandals that were white a long time ago, a blue and yellow reversible poncho, and a backpack with yellow daisies on it, jammed under my poncho. In my bag, I had dry clothes, my EpiPens, my medication, my family jewelry, and a small childhood stuffed animal. I was prepared to lose everything but what I had jammed into my bag. As I climbed into the raft I slipped and they helped haul me inside, putting me down next to the front of the raft. There was shouting then and they broke a window, I looked up to see them dragging my first-floor neighbor out of his kitchen window. He had been trapped inside, standing on the counter, drowning in his own apartment. They put him in the raft next to me, I tried to talk to him but he was semi-concise and in shock. I was between him and my nineteen-year-old roommate, she was shaking, and she looked so small in her pink rain jacket.
We live next to the trailer park in Boone, it is the cheapest place to live here. So the people who lived inside were elderly and disabled. We could hear them calling for help, screaming and yelling, and walkie-talky calls about them being stuck inside their trailers as the water rose higher and higher. As we passed College Place the motor on the raft started to die. It spluttered and started churning out black smoke as we were pulled backward, they used the body of a partially submerged car to pull us the rest of the way. We made it almost to land, and they helped us get out and walk through the knee-deep part of the water. The water was dirty and everything smelled like gasoline. It covered my legs up to the bottom of my shorts and it was the strongest water I've ever felt, even at the edge. It was like it wanted to rise up and swallow me whole.
We walked to the shelter at Greenway Baptist church and stood outside for about an hour. The Bavarian, a building near us, had buckled with people inside. Students were there with nothing. One person had a dog and no shoes. We stood together sharing stories, laughing at how insane it all was. They told me about how they had lost everything and before I knew it I had given away almost all of my dry clothes. Next to us, an older man unzipped the top of his rain jacket, and inside there was a soaking wet meowing cat pressed to his chest. He told us that that cat was his only friend and that he wouldn't leave without her. People stood there, under the shelter of the doorway of the Greenway Baptist church with all their earthly positions.
We started to walk then. We had heard that if you walked along the road far enough and crossed the bridge you could get out. As we got closer we passed some groups that had turned around, other groups disappeared and seemed to have crossed. When we got there we saw that the sides of the bridge had been ripped away by the water and debris was flying across. The three of us joined hands and started to walk into the water. My roommate's boyfriend said that he couldn't swim and suddenly all I could think about was how much he looked like my little brother. I wouldn't want my brother to cross that bridge. Suddenly it's like I came back to myself, I argued against crossing the bridge and we walked all the way back to the church. We sat inside the church for a few hours waiting for the water to go down.
As late afternoon and early evening came, the water finally went down enough for someone to get around behind the flooded area and get us. We spent that first night at my roommate's boyfriend's apartment. We were so cold and tired, covered in flood water and mud, and unable to shower. I couldn't reach my family. Not only did I have no signal, but when I walked to where I did have a signal, none of the calls would go through. People kept saying it was worse up there, that Banner Elk got hit worse than Boone, I heard all sorts of things. I remember sitting on the concrete outside and pulling my knees up under my hoodie and waiting, clutching my phone till it died, praying that they were okay.
The following days were a blur, I moved from the couch to a blowup mattress and from room to room. Eventually, my little brother called me. We were eating takeout from Taste Grill and trying to call our loved ones. His name popped up on my phone and I have never felt that kind of relief. A part of me will forever live in the moment when I heard my brother's voice for the first time after the flood. He told me that the entire community was destroyed and that it would be months till we had power or water. We laughed at the insanity and relief that the other one was okay. He explained how a house had floated by with an older woman on the porch. She kept threatening to jump into the rushing water. My dad stayed on our porch and talked her down. My brother helped save her. I heard they put a life jacket on him and he and my mom managed to get her into our house. He's been my baby brother my entire life, but he's nineteen now and he was a hero. My entire family were heroes, they took elderly neighbors into the house and watched and protected them through the flood. After the water went down my mom went out to help repair the bridge so people could leave and help could get in.
My roommate and I went back to our apartment building to see what we could salvage. Most things in our third-floor apartment survived but water had come in the doors and the windows. The entire first floor was condemned. I have a friend on the first floor and the entire apartment was coated in mud. The fridge had been lifted and was resting sideways across the counter. Someone asked me if I'd seen the car on its side in the creek. It was in fact my car on its side in the creek.
As I came down from the third floor on the wet, damaged wooden stairs, I slipped and fell. I landed on my tailbone hard. After that I kept throwing up and passing out every time I stood up, so they took me to the ER. I was there for nine hours, listening to the people injured in the flood pass my door. I was told I had severe bruising to my tailbone and contusions along my spine. They put me on crutches but I refused to give up on the idea of saving more things for my apartment. So with the help of my roommate and friends, I slowly climbed back up the three flights of stairs, using my crutches to balance. The hard part was getting back down once I was done.
My family was finally able to pick me up about a week after the flood. Without power, water, or direction, we decided to go stay with my aunt in Florida. My dad wanted to see his family after the storm and I wanted to see my boyfriend. One of our two dogs died in this ordeal and I couldn't stand the idea of going home to a house without her. We were all a little spacy, trying to process what we had just seen. We went into a gas station and my dad offered to put my crutches in the car behind me. He forgot and left them leaning up against the car. We drove away without them. We arrived in Florida just in time to prepare for Hurricane Milton. We weathered that storm better than Helene.
Now I'm displaced, lost, and unsure of what comes next. I've returned to North Carolina but I sit on the porch and I stare at the wreckage of a neighborhood I've lived in on and off since I was three. The house is still standing, unlike many others around it, but nothing looks the same. The sounds of construction vehicles clearing away the wreckage of homes that used to inhabit people I knew wake me in the morning. People keep saying Appalachia Strong and I wish I was, but it feels like I haven't gotten off that raft yet. It feels like I'm holding my breath, waiting to find out if the water swallowed us whole.
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