It Only Takes One: Heartache and Hope in the Aftermath of Helene

I visited communities hardest hit by the hurricanes of 2024. This week, I share those stories.

Author’s note: With no development expected in the Atlantic this week, the daily newsletter will devote time to sharing stories and lessons learned from survivors of the 2024 hurricane season. You can watch our full report “It Only Takes One” here.

His voice was labored, weathered from overuse, as he relived the hellish hours of a world crashing in around him six months earlier. “There is no escape,” he says, fidgeting on the remains of his family’s century-old cabin while clasping a lozenge like a shooter in a high-stakes craps game. “You just got to hope your island is, in fact, an island.”

Blake Smith is the type of hearty spirit chiseled from the Appalachian bedrock. An avid long-distance runner, he embodies the rugged individualism that forms the tapestry of western North Carolina. It never crossed his mind with Helene approaching to leave his stone-stacked riverside cottage in the quaint community of Bat Cave outside of Asheville. The cottage had stood the test of time. Even the Great Flood of 1916 – the region’s storm of record – was no match. Surely, Helene wouldn’t top that. If it did, he knew where to find higher ground – in an open field on a hill only steps above the highway running behind his cottage.

On the morning of Friday, September 27, 2024, Blake found himself in that open field across the highway with his beloved bulldog Rizzo. He’d scrambled to help his neighbors and their pets escape their homes to the shrinking field above which now resembled an island. They gazed down at the mud-filled firehose that tore their historic riverside homes from their banks. Giant trees and entire sections of homes bobbed quickly down the raging Broad River like toothpicks racing toward an open drain.

With his entire world washing away below, the earth melted from above. Mudslides and landslides pouring down in channels around them, threatening their island refuge, leaving nothing but hope and luck to cling to.

Blake and his neighbors had never been closer. The near-constant cracking of trees fell in harmony with the roar of the rabid river splashing at their feet. Snakes slithered onto their exceedingly small patch of dry land. “They had no care that we were there,” he later tells me. “They just wanted to be in the high ground.” Blake knew one unlucky break would be an untimely end.

Then from deep in the forest down the crumbling hills above came a dark omen that pierced the apocalyptic scene around them: a burst of wild animals – deer, bear, racoon, flocks of birds – fleeing the woods together in a kamikaze-like herd, hurtling toward the deadly river rapids crashing below.

Within seconds, Blake heard what sounded like a mountainside explosion. An avalanche of mud and trees came careening toward their makeshift island from behind the only home left above Bat Cave’s main highway. They winced helplessly, anticipating a swift end to their nightmare but the mudslide narrowly missed, weaving only a few hundred feet to their west, dumping piles of mud, debris, and wildlife into the swollen, raging Broad.

With that final crescendo, Helene mercifully loosened its grip. Blake and his stranded neighbors noticed their island begin to grow. The rains slackened and the Broad – which had risen 20 feet outward like the seats of a tiered amphitheater – began to fall.

Around them, Bat Cave was unrecognizable and unnavigable. Layers upon layers of thick mud, debris, and downed powerlines made movement nearly impossible. The main highway was gone. Communications were nonexistent. It would be days before rescue crews could safely reach Bat Cave, something Blake and his neighbors could only assume.

As soon as the water had receded, they started the arduous journey out. Along the way, Blake and his bulldog Rizzo picked up others left stranded, spending two dangerous days hacking through mounds of mud and debris before being discovered by rescuers.

Six months later, Blake tells me the decision to leave still isn’t so obvious. “I still hear people say, ‘well, you know, you mountain folk, you should have left. At least you could just run away from the flood.’ Well, that’s what I would have thought, too. There was nowhere to go if you tried to run from the flood. You were just as likely to run yourself into more trouble with trees or tornado or the mudslides.”

Like most I spoke with in western North Carolina, Blake Smith has no plans to abandon his community. The mountains are his home and the river is his sanctuary. The only thing left standing in the ruins of his stone cottage is the chimney, reaching high into the blue skies above reflecting down on his island in the stream.