A Helene Update

First of all, we have home internet again!  We finally got it back at the end of October.  It has gone in and out a few times since then, but it seems to be working overall. 

I’m going to try to answer all of the questions from my last Helene post, emails, etc. 

The first thing everyone wants to know is if things are back to normal.  They’re definitely not.  We have times when it feels like things are normal again, but I don’t think an entire day has been like it was before. 

Everywhere we go, there’s damage.  The city and county aren’t able to keep up with picking up the debris, so there are still trees down all over the place.  People’s ruined belongings are still piled up next to the street, waiting to be picked up.  So many houses were underwater.  There’s a lot to pick up. 

Most of the parks are still closed.  We went a couple of weeks ago to one that was partially re-opened, and there’s still so much damage.  Several of the trails and fields aren’t open.  We took a trail that went under one of the bridges that was flooded during the storm.  We both drive over this bridge almost every day, and it still seems surreal that the bridge was underwater during the worst of the flooding.  You can see where storm debris wedged into part of the bridge.

There’s a street sign in a creek.

There’s still a layer of silt on everything that was underwater.  You can see a lot of it on this tree.

There are still entire roads gone.  Some people are still using footbridges and ATVs to access their communities.  We’re some of the fortunate ones who can drive to home and work.  But there are still so many roads that are down to one lane or don’t have guardrails.  A lot of bridges are still out.  Several bridges are down to one lane or don’t have any kind of guardrails. 

We had our first significant amount of rain since Helene last week, and it definitely made people a little edgy and anxious.  I have a hard time sleeping when it rains at night.  There are still so many things that aren’t fixed and roads and trees that are barely hanging on.  What would otherwise be minor flooding could potentially cause a lot of damage right now. 

Our furnace isn’t fixed yet.  We’ve been denied property damage assistance from FEMA because there was “no property damage reported.”  We’ve gone in person to the disaster relief center, and I’ve called.  Everyone agrees that our application clearly shows property damage.  They told us to appeal the decision, so we’re currently waiting for the decision on our appeal.  My sister was nice enough to set up a fundraiser for us in the meantime.

That brings me to FEMA.  Everyone we’ve dealt with from FEMA has been incredibly nice.  And entirely unhelpful.  Other people have said the same thing, that FEMA didn’t help them at all, but it was almost hard to be upset about it because they were so nice.  No one seems to be able to figure out any kind of pattern or rationale for the assistance people get from FEMA.  I’m only sharing firsthand stories from people I’ve known for years, but some of the examples are:

A friend had a very similar thing happen to their furnace.  They received a significant portion of the cost of the replacement by early October. 

One friend was without power for 12 days and lost all of the food in their fridge and freezer.  They’re on a well, so they also had no water and had to get bottled water for everything.  They have a medical condition that requires daily nebulizer treatments and had to buy a generator for that.  They submitted a letter from their doctor stating as much with their FEMA application.  They were denied all aid, including help with food. 

Another friend had flooding in their basement.  A FEMA inspector came to their house, and they’ve received what they said is more money than it will likely cost to fix all of the damage. 

So, really, I think if you asked five different people about their experience with FEMA, you would get five different answers. 

A lot of people ask about outside help and media coverage.  Initially, there were people from all over.  There were so many power trucks from so many different states and even Canada.  There were volunteers from all over coming to help with things.  But it has been almost two months at this point.  People had to go back to their regular lives, and there have been other disasters and problems. 

The optics are different now, too.  Initially, there was water everywhere.  It’s easy to see that something is wrong when roads are underwater, and people are in lines for bottled water and MREs.  While there is certainly still an unbelievable amount of damage from floods and landslides, some things look normal again.  Some of the places that don’t have potable water have running water. The towns are no longer underwater, so it doesn’t necessarily look like the infrastructure isn’t back to normal.   Take our house, for example; it looked bad when our crawlspace looked like this. 

It looks normal now, even though it isn’t.

I think, too, everyone thinks of hurricanes as a summertime problem.  I certainly never would have thought about hurricane damage causing significant problems heading into wintertime.  This article is a good example of what some of the smaller towns are facing. 

In reading over this post, I feel like it has turned into a total whine fest, which was not my intention.  We are definitely some of the lucky ones.  Our house is still standing, and we got through the immediate aftermath with the best neighbors in the world.

And there are moments of normalcy every day now.

The chickens still come over every day for their snack.

The cats are still being adorable. 

We all know that things will eventually get back to normal.  And I promise my next post will be more cheerful.