Reflecting on Hurricane Helene
Posted by Pete on October 13, 2024 at 15:24:30
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So I started writing, and this story got a lot longer than I thought. I'm going to split it into two parts. Sorry if its not what you were expecting on this site, but I feel good about getting it off my chest.
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Wow, I have been insanely busy lately. The wife and I have a new baby at home (mom and baby are both doing great!) Work has been crazy busy, and I'm helping my brother's family while they work through some health issues with my niece. For the most part, this has all been a "good kind of busy," but it has been a bit exhausting at times.
News from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina has been hitting me "in the feels," as the kids today say. Today, I live in what we call "upstate" South Carolina, which is a couple hours drive from Asheville. Here at home, we took a glancing blow from Helene. We got a lot of rain, I think some people probably ended up with some water in their basements and garages, some trees came down, and we lost power for a couple days. Nothing to complain about at all, compared to the devastation just a couple hours north of us. It was almost kind of nice - our neighborhood took care of each other. The schools closed for I think one Friday after the storm, and we did a big cookout for the neighborhood where everyone shared food before it spoiled. People with generators allowed others to charge their phones, use extra space in the fridge and freezers, recover in the air conditioning if they needed. We shared extra gas, water and ice. We helped each other clean up downed trees and dry out anyone that got water in their house. The kids in the neighborhood hung out at whoever's houses had swimming pools.
It was almost fun - the adults basically sat around outside in nice weather and had a barbecue. The kids had a day off school and a pool party. Then the power came back on, and we caught up on laundry and enjoyed having air conditioning back.
But once those images started coming in from Asheville and the surrounding towns, I got hit with some serious survivors guilt. I'm not sure if I've shared this here before, but my very first job once I graduated from high school was as a firefighter and EMT in a small town outside of Asheville. The town, I guess you could say, took some moderate storm damage. As in, its mostly still standing, but several buildings sustained heavy damage and there was severe flooding. It sounds like the power is still out in at least parts of the town. Healthcare and emergency services is a pretty small world, and I know several people based in that area. Not being able to get in touch with them for several days (because the cell phone network and power grid were completely wiped out) was terrifying. And now that contact has been restored, the images and stories coming out of that area are beyond comprehension. Its surreal watching places that I worked in, traveled through, went to school/training at, hung out and partied at, all being completely submerged or even washed completely away by flooding. I've lived in Appalachia my entire life and never felt much of a desire to live anywhere else. Appalachia has some well known problems can make life difficult for many of us - but I don't think anyone every thought we'd see almost half of the state of North Carolina get washed away by flooding.
To be fair, floods aren't an entirely new phenomenon in the mountains. Its simple if you think about it - if the top of the mountain gets a lot of rain, the water will all flow downhill. And most of the towns are built in the valleys between the mountains. So especially in the spring, when melting snow mixes with heavy rain, its not super unusual to get some flooding and mudslides. One of the worst incidents I ever personally responded to with the fire department happened a few months into my first year as a new intern firefighter. Which meant I thought my sh-t didn't stink, even though I knew literally nothing about anything. And I was the low man on the totem pole, so any unpleasant job to do was assigned to me. A couple other bits of relevant backstory: first, I worked a 48 hour shift. The day before my shift, a friend of mine went for a run around some of the hiking trails in the mountains. I was wearing shorts, and scraped up my legs pretty good thanks to shrubs and prickly weeds and stuff. Then, I tripped and fell and got some pretty decent cuts on the side of my leg. You'll see in a minute why this is important. Second, I was way behind on doing laundry. We had a single washer/dryer in the station garage that we interns shared, and I usually did a full week or so worth of laundry on the 2nd day of my 48 hour shift. So at the start of my shift, I was down to the uniform I was wearing, one clean uniform for the next day, and maybe one extra set of socks and underwear. This is mostly because I was just too lazy and immature to keep up with doing laundry, so I procrastinated as much as possible. I had an overflowing laundry basket that I placed on the floor next to the washing machine. Again, I was the low man on the totem pole, so I was always last in the laundry line.
The first 16 hours or so of my shift were pretty routine. They were calling for rain overnight and into the next day, but nothing that seemed outrageous. We had a pretty standard day of ambulance calls and a couple fire alarms, but nothing too exciting. I went to bed that night hoping to get a good night sleep. Well, the pager goes off at about 2am for a water rescue. Our bunk rooms were on the second floor of the station, so I stumble half-asleep down stairs and out to the garage, thinking it was probably a drunk that fell in the river, or something. I opened the door the led into the garage, and stepped into ankle deep water. WTF? Then I heard the rain, and realized that it might be raining hard enough to cause some flooding. Still, an inch or so of water in the station wasn't cause for concern (yet) - the fire trucks can safely navigate at least a foot of water before you have to start to worry. Honestly, my first thought was that I wish I'd waited to put my socks on til I got out to the truck, since they were now soaked. And I like swimming in clothes, but when its JUST your socks that are wet, and you have to go put boots on and do a bunch of physical activity, that's not fun for me. But anyway, I get in the truck and the garage door opens, and a wall of water rushes in through the open door - the truck can still safely drive through it, but now its a few inches of water on the floor of the garage. So we take off towards the emergency call, and find a vehicle submerged in flood water. Me and my partner Austin (who was another brand new firefighter, probably smarter than me, but equally inexperienced), we get told to "go get the driver out." Keep in mind, we have zero water rescue training and zero idea what we're doing, so we just splash out there into the chest-deep water. "You know how to swim?" I joked to Austin. "I think I remember how... but I'm not sure I know how to swim in THIS," he said, pointing to his turnout coat and pants. The heavy protective gear we wear is great for keeping us safe from jagged metal or shards of glass, but its not waterproof. In fact, it absorbs water and gets incredibly heavy. But, I figured, at least it wasn't just my socks that were wet anymore. We end up getting the person out of the car easily enough and get her back safely to dry land. Next call comes in right away - a rescue in a basement. We fly over to the address, and find an elderly person who's basement is filling with water, and her dog is somewhere down there. Again, Austin and I get told to go search for the dog, so we splash down into the flooded basement and find the terrified pup hiding on top a table, and carry him back up to reunite with his owner. Next, a call for an electrical issue. Water was pouring into a garage right next to the electric box. Our shift officer tells me and Austin to just go flip the main breaker. Now, if you're thinking that standing in flood water and flipping electric breakers might not be a great idea - YOU'D BE RIGHT! But, we didn't know any better and were following orders. Luckily we didn't get electrocuted. But the shift went on like that for a few hours, just back-to-back-to-back calls. Nothing too extreme, but very, very wet. Fortunately, the rain stopped after an hour or two, and by the time we finally made it back to the station around 7am, the water was starting to recede.
We started trying to clean off our station floor and squee-gee out the last of the standing water. My laundry, which had been sitting in a basket on the floor, was drenched with murky muddy water, but I didn't care, I'd figure I'd just wash it later. Honestly, I was having fun - I had no idea what I was doing, but I was at least doing some real hero stuff. It was an exciting night, and I was having that euphoria that comes from a mix of sleep deprivation and adrenaline. But then our chief walked in looking somber. He gathered us for a briefing, and informed us that the weather forecast was calling for even more rain and storms that afternoon and evening, and that we should prepare for more flooding. He told those of us who had been running calls all night to try to get some sleep for a couple of hours, and then we'd have another briefing around noon to plan for the rest of the day. So, I did as I was told - took a shower, changed into my last clean uniform and last set of clean socks and boxers, tossed my soaked uniform from the previous night in my overflowing laundry basket of soaked clothes, and went up to my bunk for a couple hours nap.