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After the Deluge

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — At 7:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27, Chris Trusz was standing on one of the bridges spanning the Broad River in Chimney Rock. He wanted to get a photo. It had been raini

Commercial districts have the same ghostly quality they had during COVID, and the shoulders of many roadways are piled with what was left of downed trees, the white oaks, maples, and pines that drew 14 million visitors a year, especially in late September and October, when the region blazes red and gold. An ecosystem of good hearts formed post-Helene: the S*E*R*T team; the hundreds of trucks pulling up to T-Birds; the AI developer who, the day after the hurricane, made it his business to figure out how to find, bottle, and deliver drinking water; the Asheville bakery giving free fresh-baked pastries to patrons who left 20s in the tip jar; the seemingly limitless number of churches (“You hear the state sometimes referred to the as the prong in the Bible Belt,” said Beverly Ramsey, who is also an ordained minister) being of service, including the man in a “Don’t Let the Bad Days Win” shirt unloading pallets of bottled water and baby diapers; private citizens volunteering to go door-to-door to do wellness checks; translators helping non-English speakers fill out aid applications; community centers providing relaxation rooms to exhausted road workers; and the man who keeps a backpack of emergency supplies at-the-ready at all times who brought his 9-year-old daughter with him as he carried life-sustaining goods to people unable to escape their mountain homes, people for whom the surprise of a little girl brought its own kind of sunshine. While work crews continued clearing the roads, and while Trusz had nothing but goodwill for private and public sector efforts (“The community, the 101st Airborne, FEMA, everybody’s been here helping out,” he said, waving at several truckloads of National Guard), life in Chimney Rock has yet to resume, residents and business owners still figuratively rising to the surface.

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