The Aftermath of Hurricane Helene
Story
This story was submitted on September 25, 2025 by Jensen Metzel
- Title
- The Aftermath of Hurricane Helene
- Description
-
I remember Hurricane Helene very vividly. In the days leading up to the hurricane, I had no idea it was going to be as bad as it was. I hadn’t really been watching the news, and my mom kept texting me updates about the storm. Mind you, my family lives in the Wake Forest–Raleigh area. I remember telling her, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” She would text me incessantly again, I had no idea it was going to be as bad as it was. Nobody did.
I brushed it off, thinking it was just going to be a short rainstorm. But little did I know the devastation that would follow. The night before, I didn’t think to get bottled water, non-perishables, or anything like that. All I had bought was toilet paper. I was ignorant. As anxious a person as I am, I’m usually much better at planning for the worst. This time, I wasn’t. And this time, I dealt with the consequences.
The morning of September 27, my roommate and I woke up to a flooded basement. Our power had gone out. We were without food, water, or electricity. At that point, we began collecting rainwater just to have something to drink. We couldn’t call or text our families. We were completely disconnected from everyone, just the two of us, waiting for the storm to blow over.
Around 4 p.m., the rain finally stopped. My roommate and I went outside to assess the damage. To the right of our house, the road above ours had collapsed, causing a major landslide that spilled into the middle of our street, blocking us in. The basement of a house below ours had flooded about five feet. The students living there had to break a window to let the water escape.
Looking in the other direction, to the left of our house, a power line hung dangerously in the middle of the street. The wind had knocked over a tree, which had landed right on it.
After seeing all the destruction Hurricane Helene had caused, my roommate and I began trying to clear the road so we could leave the neighborhood in search of food and water. A few of our neighbors were doing the same. As we tried to clear debris from under our car with a snow shovel, a college student from across the street approached us, asking for help.
The poor guy looked pale, was shivering, clearly hungry, and dehydrated. He said he didn’t live at the house and that he was just staying with his buddies. They had no food or water, and he asked us for a ride. His car had been completely demolished. Debris, including a ping pong table, had been lodged underneath it. He couldn’t get out. His car had been parked at the house with five feet of flooding in the basement, so I could only imagine what it looked like.
My roommates and I were fortunate to have only five inches of flooding. We lived in a duplex on a hill my roommate and I lived upstairs, and our two other roommates (two guys) lived on the bottom floor.
Eventually, we cleared the debris from beneath our car and went in search of any places that might be open. Once we saw that there was power on campus, we stopped at The Market. Sheetz was open too, so that became our second stop, before taking the guy we helped back home.
The next day, not knowing when our power would be back, I packed my things and left to stay with my family for the next few weeks. - Spatial Coverage
- 1255 Old Bristol Rd
- Date
- Sept 26-28
- Item sets
- Unknown
