In Watauga County's mountain towns, community members rally following Hurricane Helene's devastation

In the outskirts of Boone and surrounding towns, the word “community” has become synonymous with survival. 

Hurricane Helene has left behind a landscape scarred by gravel and stone-filled rushing water. Bridges, roads and homes have been washed away. And as of Tuesday afternoon, two people were confirmed dead in Watauga County.

Now, residents are coming together to meet their neighbors' needs as help from the outside starts to make its way into these mountain communities.  

Volunteers come to Boone

It’s a rainy morning in Boone. Jacob Williard and his crew are standing in the parking lot of the Alliance Bible Fellowship, as the sound of idling diesel trucks fills the air. The church has become a central hub for supplies and services distribution following Hurricane Helene’s devastation of the area. 

Williard and his crew have volunteered for two jobs to start the day. Now he has to decide the best way to utilize the backhoe, bucket truck and skid steer he hauled from his home base in Stokes County, where he runs a tree service business. 

Half the crew makes their way to the Bryant household on the outskirts of town. They’re tasked with filling a set of collapsed driveways. 

Lisa Bryant greets them while sitting on her front porch with her dog Lacey. A lifelong Boone resident, she had never seen a weather event as severe as Helene. 

"We’ve seen you know, good storms," Bryant said. "Our basement’s flooded before but nothing like this. At one point we were trying to open drains here at my neighbor's house, Tracy, and the water was just coming so fast that we couldn’t even get the drains open so there was literally nothing we could do."

Bryant was left with a broken leg after a rockslide rushed through her yard during the storm. 

She looked back on the experience of being inside as the wind shook her home. 

"You just kind of had that sense of is it gonna hold," Bryant said. "You know, I’ve been here my whole life. It’s an old house. I guess the worst part was looking out the window and watching the water cut away the driveway and just cut away the front yards of my neighbors and nothing that you could do, except just watch the water go." 

Bryant says despite the experience, she's thankful. She’d just gotten cell phone service for the first time in days and was just starting to see the effects of Helene outside of her neighborhood.

In her yard, the volunteers are hard at work, using heavy machinery to move the tons of dirt that slid downhill, landing in a parking lot behind the Bryants’ home. 

A longtime teacher, Bryant gets a call from Scott Carter, the principal of Cove Creek Elementary.

He and a few teachers and staff are meeting midday at the school. Some will distribute food and water they’ve collected. Others, like Carter, will drive around town looking to make contact with students, and families they haven’t heard from since Helene. 

Meeting the need

The entrance to the school is filled with packets of bottled water, towers of basic over-the-counter medicines and supplies like diapers and toothbrushes.
 
In the coming days, Carter says the school will add portable showers and charging stations. He says many still don’t know how hard the small mountain towns in Watauga County were impacted.

"This area, Vilas, North Carolina, Sugar Grove, Mable, the Bethel area, was hit really really hard," Carter said. "It honestly looks like a bomb went off down there."

Carter explained how the water washed away roads and other structures that served as some residents' only connection to the outside world.  

"A lot of the homes have bridges that go over creeks," Carter said. "Those creeks turned into rivers, raging rivers during this. They took out homes, they took out all the bridges, so these people are truly stuck where they’re at." 

Carter’s next stop is the Mountaineer Ruritan Club, an aid distribution center serving as a community hub in Sugar Grove. 

He arrives at the same time as a family who had been stranded for days. Twin boys, about six years old and covered in dried mud from head to toe, greet him. 

"I survived," one of the boys yells when he sees Carter.

Time to help

As friends reunite and volunteers coordinate their efforts, three young community members pull into a parking lot next to the club. The bed of their truck is filled with fresh food and a large pot. 

They start chopping vegetables and make a sign reading “free hot soup,” punctuated with a heart. 

The group just left their homes for what would likely be the last time. In their minds, there was nothing left for them to do but help others, said Michael Cook, a Sugar Grove resident. 

"[We're] just making soup for the people, man, our houses are gone and we got done what we needed to do to take care of ourselves and people who helped us find shelter and a roof over our heads and beds," Cook said. "We’re done helping ourselves and it’s time to help others. "

Cook mentioned much of the debris that damaged his home slid down from a housing development uphill from him. 

Post-Helene house visit

A few miles down the road, Principal Carter drives to check on families. He passes by entire cars hanging from trees, fallen bridges brought dozens of feet downstream and people rushing to empty their houses after being flooded. 

Carter, a victim of Hurricane Florence when he lived in Wilmington, talks about his surprise at seeing such similar weather and damage hundreds of miles inland. The only difference he says was during Florence the water simply rose. In Watauga County, it rushed down from the mountains.

Carter arrived at his student Ethan Oravits’ house. Ethan is a huge Mets fan. He’d just gotten cell service and was glued to his phone after finding out his team made the playoffs the day before — a historic occasion for a ball club in perpetual struggle. 

As he caught up with the outside world, Melissa, Ethan’s mom, showed Carter the damage to her home. 

They’d been lucky. There was bit of flooding, but their house was in good shape. Melissa’s garden was another story. 

The creek that ran in front of her house had swelled to maybe 30 feet wide. It washed away the garden along with the bridge that served as one of two connections to the road. 

All things considered, she said the bridge’s collapse was a blessing. 

"There were cars, I mean there's cars and trucks floating so I feel like if it hadn’t gone, it would have dammed the water and just come up here," Oravits said. 

As Oravits showed Carter the damage, a minivan drove down her debris-riddled road. The car parked and two of her friends stepped out. They brought hot dogs wrapped in tin foil, water and more hugs. 

One bite at a time

Back in Boone, sitting on her porch, Lisa Bryant thought about what it’ll take to make her community whole. 

"The old adage is how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time," Bryant said. "And I guess that’s the only answer we can come up with. We’ll continue to help each other out and take care of the most dangerous places, because that’s what we gotta do." 

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story identified Sugar Grove as Sugar Cove in some instances. 

 

Santiago Ochoa covers healthcare for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. Follow him on X and Instagram: @santi8a98