Saving Others with Kindness: My Escape from the Hurricane
Date: October 7. 2024
Written by: Michael Neece
When I left the NC SHRM conference in Cherokee, NC to "get ahead of the storm" on Friday morning, I instead drove right into it.
I picked up snacks, but just enough for the trip. No need to overspend, right? And I drove past a gas station or two thinking, "Oh, I'll get the next one."
Then I was dodging trees. On I-40, one of the best maintained highways in our state. Trees. Big ones. And then I was seeing big rigs dodging them alongside me, so I pulled off the road and called my wife. We agreed that hunkering down was in order.
At the next exit, I spied a hotel on a high hill to the right, and to the left? Water. Deep water. All over the road. And the gas station. And the hotel.
Up the hill to the darkened hotel lobby to wait it out. Surely, power would be back soon. Then word came back that a house had floated past in all that gushing water. And there was a woman still inside the house, so rescuers had to help her down and away from her home.
I left the hotel, stood by the water, and commented to the man next to me how terrible this all was. He said he had fled his home after a knock on his door at 1:30 AM and a yelled request to "Pack up your family and everything you can in 15 minutes! The dam's about to burst. We might have an hour." The man said everything that mattered in life was with him, family and pets and a few things, even if his young daughter lamented not getting all her dress-up shoes.
The hotel eventually asked us to leave since they couldn't vet us, thus we'd be a risk to the current residents. I looked at the young mother who was sitting with her 4-year-old daughter and 5-year-old family dog ("It was his birthday, but I'm still just 4!"). I gave her all my snacks and she thanked me, noting that she didn't have time to grab any food before fleeing her home that was now washed away by the dam burst. And the hotel was kicking her out?
I asked the man at the desk, and he leaned in and whispered something about bending some rules.
I took my chances, heading toward Black Mountain on I-40, but everything slowed, then stopped. Word was that I-40 might clear in 24 hours. Cell service was almost zero, but not quite, so I let my wife know I would search around for a gas station and a different road out of town. But my phone wouldn't grab any GPS for more than a moment here and there, so she read me directions over the phone as if we were in 1997.
After trying every road I could--route 9 had power lines down, and Old Hwy 70 was just...missing--I settled back to I-40 to sleep in my minivan on the shoulder of the road in front of a tractor-trailer.
By 5 AM, I was awake, so I drove to route 9 again, but with no human to turn me away, I drove past 6 downed power lines and up to a mound of dirt the size of a house just sitting on the road. Back to I-40, this time on the on-ramp, where everyone still waited.
Word came that it was "more than a mudslide" and involved a lot of rocks, so it would be at least a week before I-40 would allow any travel. Cars and big-rigs started peeling off to find other places to wait and hope.
I made friends with the two drivers in front of me. Fletch, a local retiree who plays guitar, mandolin, and fiddle, offered us Cheerwines. Jaehyun, an X-ray technician from a few towns over, looked at me somewhat apologetically about the slow rate of his English. I assured him that his English was terrific compared to my Korean. Connor, a 19-year-old native who moved from Raleigh just 2 months before, joined us.
Since I had 111 miles of gas left according to my minivan and the other 3 gentlemen had 30 miles or less each, we piled into my vehicle in search of gas, water, food, and information about roads. Nobody else had service, so I loaned my phone out for messages and calls...and off we drove.
Four hours of driving revealed more roads completely washed away, communities that were in blackout conditions in every direction. No power means no gas could be pumped, even if they were open. We found a feed and seed store that was open, accepting cash, so we took our chances. Farmers like to buy snacks when they make their purchases, so...we all got waters, sodas, Cheetos, doughnuts, and whatever else we could find fit for human consumption.
A trip to the Asheville Regional Airport area revealed power outages there as well. Restaurants and grocery stores were all closed, but the Lowe's had generators, and the Target was taking its chances in being very tightly "opened." Translation = both had long lines and employees were coming out to distribute supplies like water and drinks, plus diapers and baby formula from the Target.
Then the hard choice. Keep going somewhere and burn up my last 30 miles, or get back to the other 3 cars on fumes. Power was out EVERYWHERE, and the two gas stations that were in or around Asheville had unbelievably long lines and, according to Fletch and Connor, people inside "yelling at each other."
We chose fumes
When we got back to their cars, Connor made the bold and smart assumption that if he drove toward the mudslide on I-40, he would encounter rescue personnel and could get help there. He texted his mom back and forth a bit more on my phone and left.
Fletch said he'd go into town and Jaehyun and I agreed we would stick together and find someplace in Black Mountain to get water, bathroom time, and safely spend the night in our cars again.
The information center for the town had cupcakes and a whiteboard with updates. FEMA would be coming, National Guard was already here. (I eventually saw one National Guard vehicle 3 hours later, but we never saw FEMA. That's not a critique - just an observation that information during a disaster is always tenuous and helpers are desperate to arrive but encounter their own problems on the way.) I passed my phone around for people to text or call loved ones. Fletch heard that his girlfriend was okay and would come get him. Then Jaehyun and I left.
Jae and I walked back to our cars and pondered life. He's from South Korea and we shared our love of astronomy and telescopes. We talked about mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters...and the gorgeous mountains all around us. We felt lucky to have a friend during a hard time, and a sudden connection to anything other than our phones. In this utterly upside down world, human connections meant more than phones! Who'd have ever thought...?
We got word of a hotel giving out food. They had seen the storm coming, cooked everything they could until power went out, and they were ready to serve the community. As we stood in line, I found a presenter from the conference with her own "disaster crew." She and her crew got food, but they ran out before getting to Jae and me. But we still had Cheetos and doughnuts, so don't weep for us.
We converged on a BP gas station where we heard power might come on at 10 pm. About 30 people, plus babies and family pets, were hunkered down in a makeshift collective. A baby who was crying was handed around to various helpers who weaved through the parked cars. I can only guess how many times we all observed our new world felt like "the zombie apocalypse without any zombies." Forgive us for making jokes when so many suffered. But it was surreal to the point of ridiculousness, and sideways jokes were just the norm for the group.
By 9 pm, everyone was exhausted, in our individual cars, and trying to sleep. The occasional automatic alarms, complete with light and sound whenever someone touched this car or that one...they hardly bothered us.
By 10 pm, there was a surprise visitor: a man who drove up from Asheville and started pouring gas into 3 or 4 gas tanks to help us out. When offered money, he wouldn't take any. He wanted to help people.
He recruited anyone whose cars he had just given a bit of gas to follow him to a gas station to fill even more containers and bring those back to the rest of us. He would press on to a different gas station to help even more people while his recruits took care of us.
I was exhausted, and sank back into my car for more sleep. I hoped those new recruits would find the gas station and then find their way back. I'm terrible with directions, so I'm glad I was staying put.
Sure enough, 2 hours later, everyone was aflutter with cars getting gas transfusions, enough to get to the gas station themselves.
Jaehyun had to tap loudly to wake me, and before I knew it, I was pouring gas into my own car (and onto my foot) while he pointed his phone light to help me see.
And then we all confirmed we understood...caravan together, hazard lights blinking, and it was only 18 miles away.
We drove, bleary-eyed, and got to a Sheetz. There, we found power, gas pumps with credit card readers, and salvation. We were so relieved, nerves shot, exhausted, and we got a group picture.
And then another caravan down to Charlotte. We followed each other, lights blinking, and then branched off in directions to get to our homes.
I made it to my wife by 6:15 AM, not quite two days after I had decided to "beat the storm." I think we all know who got the beating in this story.
The short summary is that the devastation is powerful, horrible, and persistent. An entire region is vastly without power, thus any storefront that sells food or had bathrooms had to close. Gas stations without power cannot pump gas. Cell service was mostly out and GPS was so poor that a power repair man told a group of us at the BP before we were rescued, "Lots of us got up here with our repair trucks but then were blocked by closed roads. Then we got stuck with everyone else. So many guys are lost."
The uplifting thing in all of this: humans are amazing. We took delight in small things, like getting a liter of water for the day, looking at the gorgeous mountains, and seeing the sunrise. We all had new friends.
I am one of the lucky ones. I can look back on this as a 2-day "adventure."
If you are lucky like me, please consider any of the western NC disaster relief efforts.
Love and hopeful wishes to the good souls helping those in need in any place affected by Hurricane Helene. CSHRM