Western Carolina homeowners helped by Disaster ReBuilders share stories of horror and hope
When people think of hurricane danger, they often picture waves crashing over beaches, palm trees bending in the wind, and miles of traffic streaming away from the coast. But no two storms are alike — and 2024’s Hurricane Helene was horrifyingly unique.
Though Helene made landfall in Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend as a powerful Category 4 storm, no state suffered more than did North Carolina. At least 108 people lost their lives, more than 120,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and entire communities were left isolated as roads and bridges vanished beneath floodwaters.
Nowhere was the destruction worse than in western North Carolina — some 350 miles from the nearest beach — where peaceful mountain streams turned into raging torrents that tore through valleys and towns with unimaginable force. The floods rose fast and fell almost as quickly, leaving behind a thick blanket of mud and heartbreak.
Over the past year, the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders have brought in teams of volunteers to help families climb that long road to recovery. They’ve already completed major rebuilds for 28 families, with 13 more rebuilds under way and plans to begin work on 56 new houses this winter on a 10-acre tract of land.
During our recent visit to their worksites in small towns of rural western Carolina, we met homeowners whose lives are being rebuilt — one wall, one nail, one prayer at a time. Here are three of those stories.
JENNIFER SILVER, Bakersville (population 450)
“This was my safe place,” Jennifer Silver says of her home near the foot of a hillside and 600 feet uphill from the scenic North Toe River. It was safe until the night of September 26, 2024. That’s the night Helene dumped historic rainfall on the area, turning the highway in front of her house into a raging river that devastatingly merged with the North Toe at her house.
Like many, she had heard that there was a possibility of some flooding, but area residents had heard that multiple times that year already. She woke that night when the power went off and grew more concerned as her dog and cat joined her in bed.
“It was unusual for them to do that,” Jennifer said.
She was next awakened by the sound of water. She assumed it was coming from a pre-existing leak in her living room ceiling, but when she stepped out of bed, she stepped into ankle-deep water. She put her purse around her neck and made her way into the living room where water was coming through gaps in her front door. When she tried to open it to get out, she was greeted by muddy rapids and fast-moving debris in the water.
She managed to close the door and tried to escape with her animals through a window. Unfortunately, she fell through the window into the dark, dangerous waters. Her animals left behind managed to find their way to safety while Silver sought help. She trudged through the water to the highway and then slid down an embankment. Holding on for her life and covered with mud, she was rescued by a nearby family who fed her and put her up for the night.
“That’s how I met my neighbors,” Jennifer said.
The river would rise 30 feet, and four feet of water flooded her home, ruining all of her belongings and a return to her “safe place” appeared all but impossible. She needed a place to stay, but when the local sheriff arrived the next day and asked if she wanted to go to a shelter for Helene victims, she told them “no.” There was somewhere else she needed to be — at The Greens, a short-term rehabilitation, long-term care facility with about 90 patients where she has worked for 20 years.
“All I’ve ever done is take care of people my whole life,” she explained. “I’m a giver, not a taker. I thought that if I was there doing what the Lord put me here to do, then it would take my mind off what just happened. It was very important to me. I needed to make sure that other people were OK.”
Unfortunately, The Greens was severely impacted by the storm, as was the vast majority of Western Carolina. The terrified residents were in the dark with no power and no running water. Jennifer and a small group of colleagues used a bucket to fetch water from a nearby creek so they could flush toilets.
“We were all in survival mode there, too,” she said. “We had just a handful of staff. We were working 16-hour shifts, back to back with little sleep. But we didn’t lose anybody. … We were just praying for help all the time. I lived there for 14 days. It was probably seven days before I was able to take an actual shower. It was so good to get clean, finally.”
She is still traumatized by the experience and has shed a river of tears over the past 12 months, especially when she recounts that terrifying night of the flood. But the teams of volunteers who have come from across the country to help restore her home with the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders have brought joy back into her life.
“I’ve never been blessed so much in my entire life,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been doing the Lord’s work for a long time being a caregiver. I always got satisfaction from doing what I love. When all this happened and then the blessings started rolling in, I thought, oh, I guess it’s my turn. To have this home back will just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It won’t be long.”
“They’re fantastic,” she added. “They’re not only doing this hard work, but they’re emotionally supportive, as well. I feel like they love me, and I love them.”
ZOYE MILLER, Swannanoa (pop. 5,021)
Zoye Miller had recently paid off the mortgage on her home and was embracing a quiet life in retirement. Located across a highway from the Swannanoa River, the home enjoyed an upgrade of new appliances, part of a Christmas gift from family members. She did run a small bakery for fun out of her garage, where her adult son also lived.
“I was thinking that this would be my retirement, and I’ll be able to take it easy,” she said.
She left that peaceful home behind to have surgery in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in September of last year. While she was gone, however, Helene paid her unwelcome visit. The Swannanoa River rose about 20 feet in 20 minutes as floodwaters poured down from the surrounding mountains.
“It reached up to my ceiling, and my house has nine-foot ceilings,” Zoye, who is originally from Ukraine, said. “My garage and two cars were completely submerged under water and then under mud. We couldn’t save anything in my house — no furniture, no cars, nothing.”
While she did not experience the trauma of having to survive the storm, she was horrified by what she saw upon returning home. With assistance, she barely made it through the mud to try to open the front door or peek in a window. She managed to do neither.
“I was so in shock because it was too much for me after surgery and then for this to happen,” she said. “When I came here for the first time after the storm, you couldn’t even walk here. The mud was up to my waist in the yard, and we could not see anything when we looked through the window. We couldn’t even push the door open.”
She moved into her daughter’s home nearby but became despondent as application after application for help or housing was denied. She was ready to give up hope of ever having her own home again, especially the one she had recently paid off.
“I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t talk. I was shaking 24/7. I still have anxiety like I’ve never had before. I haven’t had an easy life, but this time was really bad. I walked away from this place. I never believed that this place could be livable again.”
She kept waiting for FEMA to respond but says they finally settled upon giving her “10 percent” of what her home had been worth.
Disaster ReBuilders’ leadership, including Toni Ratliff, learned about Zoye’s predicament before Zoye had even heard of the Disaster ReBuilders.
“Toni came to me and said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. We can help you rebuild your house’,” Zoye recalled. “I’d just be thinking they’re joking. FEMA gave me just 10 percent of my house value — how are they going to rebuild my house? Toni said, ‘Don’t worry, and tell us what you need.’”
Today, the only mud in Zoye’s home is drywall mud being applied by Disaster ReBuilders volunteers bringing once destroyed walls back to life.
“They’re great people,” Miller said. “It’s been good for my heart.”
CHINA LANGFORD & NATHAN SMITH, Old Fort (pop. 811)
Though they loved living in West Asheville, China Langford and Nathan Smith were ready for a change. They wanted a friendly small mountain town where they could start a coffee shop and then become foster parents. They looked at dozens of places in the general area, but a historic home in Old Fort spoke to them.
“We’d probably looked at a hundred places,” China recalled. “We didn’t necessarily have our hearts set on Old Fort, but we fell in love with the house. It’s one of the oldest homes in town. The people we bought it from, it had been in their family since the 1930s, and their history in Old Fort went way back before that. In addition to falling in love with the house, we really liked the idea of carrying on their legacy. And they liked the idea of selling it to somebody who’s going to live there and take care of it.”
“My in-laws were always vouching for Old Fort and saying there was so much opportunity here with what we wanted to do,” Nathan said. “t seemed to align with our values. We found a spot within walking distance of downtown, and it seemed like a good fit for us.”
They purchased the home about three years ago and launched Seeker Coffee about a year before Helene.
“We were just getting our footing here,” China said. “We did meet a lot more people after opening the coffee shop because everybody loves coffee. That’s when things really started falling into place as far as feeling rooted here.”
As with most locals, they did not expect Helene to bring historic flooding, but they prepared just in case. Their preparations, however, weren’t even close to being a match for Helene’s fury.
“People were talking about the possibility of flooding, but it felt about the same as several other times during the year when there was a chance of minor flooding,” China recalled. “It felt like that. It didn’t feel like it’d be nothing, but it didn’t feel all that different from other hurricanes that had come through the area. Most people were out of sandbags, but we put a few out and dug a trench to try to guide the water away from the house and took everything off the floors … just in case.
“By the next day, that was laughable.”
Immediately after the storm, the Old Fort Strong Fund was started by Camp Greer, a summer camp in town. Much of its funds came from staging an endurance festival the December after Helene. Endurance athletes including bikers and runners came from across the country to compete in 6-, 12- and 24-hour competitions. The fund, though, didn’t just hand out money. It paired those in need with those who could help, and the money went to each collaboration. China and Nathan were matched with the Disaster ReBuilders.
“It was like a life preserver was thrown to us,” Nathan said. “We couldn’t sort our thoughts out. It was very chaotic with a lot of unknowns. But when people started showing up, it was like the waters were calming … literally. We knew there was some support behind us.”
He appreciates that the volunteers are not just concerned about their house itself but about his and China’s well-being, including having a successful business. Many have made the short walk from the house to the coffee shop to lend their support … and sample some delicious coffee, of course.
“I always try to give thanks and gratitude to everybody that’s come through,” Nathan said. “Many of them have come in here as customers, too. I appreciate them coming here to support this. It gives me a minute to pause and appreciate them coming here to support this. It’s our whole life they’ve come to support, not to just work on a house. They come here on their holidays or time off, and that means a lot.”
China is grateful and inspired by the teams of volunteers who keep coming. She believes they set an example that everyone should follow all the time, not just in the wake of a disaster or problem.
“I’ve probably met over a hundred volunteers,” she said. “They’ve all been the sweetest people. I keep saying this, but ‘thank you’ is too small of a phrase. I need something bigger. And I keep thinking, ‘What if we took care of each other this well all the time, not just after a disaster?’ We see that it’s possible.”
We'd love to hear your comments!