Flooding is a bitch.
Last Thursday when I sat down to write—something, I’m not really sure what—I stared out the window and saw more rain pouring down than I’d seen in a long time. We were on about the third straight day of heavy rain here in East Tennessee, but why worry? After all we’re a landlocked state, right? There’s no way a hurricane could seriously affect my area, right?
Oh dear readers, how little I knew.
Earlier in the week, a buddy of mine in Panama City texted me about the coming hurricane. “You should look out for this one. It’s going to be a doozy.”
“Maybe for you, dude. I live in Tennessee. We’ll be okay. There will be rain but we’ll survive.”
Again, dear readers, how little I knew.
Before anyone jumps in the comments and tries to start shit about how we should’ve seen this coming, let me say absolutely no one—and I mean no one—could’ve seen this coming. The flooding East Tennessee and Western North Carolina experienced is best described as “biblical levels of destruction.”
Bridges I’ve driven across hundreds of times in my youth washed away in minutes. Part of I-40 East between Newport, Tennessee and Asheville, North Carolina is gone. In my mountain hometown of Greeneville, Tennessee, the water treatment plant got submerged and destroyed, effectively cutting the water supply for all of Greene County.
You don’t really think about how much damage water can do until you’ve seen it. Sure, fire burns stuff and tornados have the nasty wind thing down, but water? Water just rushes over everything and washes it away. It’s indiscriminate in the destruction it wreaks. There’s a national park outside of Greeneville—Davy Crockett’s Birthplace—that’s gone as a result of Helene.
Helene’s flooding left a lot of mud. Sweet Christmas, there’s mud everywhere. And everything stinks of sediment and muck.
The places that lost water are really hard up at the moment. You have no idea how much you use water daily until you’ve lost access to it. Showers are out of the question. So is cleaning. And flushing your toilets. Not to mention laundry.
Someone referred to Helene as East Tennessee and Western North Carolina’s Katrina. I would say that’s a fair assessment. We were about as prepared for Helene as folks were for Katrina and it smacked us good and hard as a result. To be fair though, when you’re about 700 miles from the place where this fucker hit land, you’re sort of expecting it to get tuckered out before it reaches your front door.
As bad as we got hit, Asheville was hit even worse. That community effectively became an island after the flooding. No power, no internet, no roads—it was effectively a scene from “Mad Max” set in the mountains. Those folks were happy when Elon Musk showed up with his Starlink internet services so they could at least send messages to loved ones.
Now that the rain’s died down and the flood waters receded, there’s a lot of work to be done. There’s still search parties looking for survivors. Homes are being assessed for damage. People are returning to what’s left of their properties and trying to salvage what they can find. It’s going to be a rough road to recovery. Fortunately, my mountain people are tough. Hill folk have lived through just about every spot of adversity and unpleasantness with a smile and a “Hold my beer.”
And there’s signs of progress being made too. Water’s flowing back into pipes in Greene County as I type this, thanks to a historic effort from folks as far away as Birmingham, Alabama coming to help out. Unfortunately, due to my well documented loyalty to Rocky Top, that’s the last nice thing I’m going to say about anyone from Alabama. Donations poured into the local animal shelter from 8 am to 5 pm Monday and Tuesday.
If one good thing came out of all this mess it’s that small town Southerners are truly special people. We may have our disagreements but when the chips are down and lives are at stake, we band together and work towards common good.
It shouldn’t take a damn hurricane to bring that kind of spirit out in us. I wish it didn’t. But the fact that this kind of a disaster did more to unite than divide folks isn’t lost on me.
So that’s it for this week, folks. I apologize if this was a bit morose this week, but hey—flooding will do that to a man’s sense of humor. What’s important is that I’m alive, you’re alive, and we’ve all made it to the weekend once more. So smile, kick back at five with the beverage of your choice and toast your friends and loved ones with me today.
Life’s short. You never know when it’ll be the last time you get to do it.