Photo courtesy of Ashley Vinson
When Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida’s gulf coast nearly a month ago, the category 4 hurricane ravaged the southeastern United States. The storm devastated areas of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, nearly wiped cities like Asheville, N.C. off the map, and has left residents across all six states missing and unaccounted for. In its wake, the storm took over 230 lives, making it the deadliest Hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005.
Even hundreds of miles away in Emporia, Kan., the storm’s impact still resonates.
Junior psychology major Christine Turner found out through her mom that her aunt and uncle were going to be impacted by Helene the day of the storm. She lost contact with them shortly after the storm reached their town of Douglas, Georgia. There was not an evacuation order for their area.
“I just sent her a message that night, and I was just like ‘I heard you’re in it, you’re gonna be in it, and so I just wanna check on you and make sure you’re doing okay’ and she responded to that,” said Turner. “And then after that we were not able to get in contact with her, and her kids weren’t able to get in contact with her.”
The storm had taken out the power lines in its path, which caused cell service to go down alongside the damage it inflicted. For Turner, who has never experienced a hurricane, the storm was unknown territory; it scared her.
“I love my aunt and uncle, they’re like my favorite people, and so it was genuinely like the first time I’ve ever been really scared for family,” she said.
It would be a Facebook comment from her aunt that would later inform her of her aunt and uncle’s safety. They had rode out the storm in a shed-like building behind their house.
“I had my suspicions, obviously, that she wasn’t really that hurt because none of my family said anything, but finally just getting that actual confirmation myself, was very much just, it felt really good to know that she was okay,” Turner said.
For Emporia State alumnus Ashley Vinson, Helene ravaged her town of Sugar Grove, N.C. just outside of Boone. She and her husband, who live in a flood zone and have the Cove Creek that runs into the Watauga River behind their house, lost most of their home to flooding caused by the storm.
“It basically started raining on Wednesday, and did not stop until the storm was done,” said Vinson, who later indicated that the initial rainfall was actually not part of the storm.
“It just happened to be randomly raining, which is really what made this as bad as it was, because our land probably could have sustained a little bit more of the impact from the hurricane. It definitely would have had flooding, but would not have been as bad,” she said.
Prior to the storm, Vinson believed that its effect would be no more than what was caused by Hurricane Florence in 2018. Unlike her husband, she was “convinced” that their living space would not flood. She quickly found out that was not the case.
“(At 7:30 in the morning) it hadn’t even reached our backyard yet, but was definitely getting there…and then by 9:30 (a.m.), it was halfway through our backyard, and so it was a really quick difference,” Vinson said.
Left without cell service since 9 a.m. and with two dogs in tow, Vinson and her husband left to take shelter at their neighbors house on higher ground around 10:30 a.m. When her husband, who is 5’9”, went back to their house around 11 a.m. to retrieve his glasses and epilepsy medicine for one of their dogs, the flood water outside was already up to his waist.
“It was waist deep outside but it hadn’t quite gotten to our living area yet, but he looked down in the basement and (the water) had already completely filled our entire basement and was at the stairs (to) our living area.” said Vinson. “I think we have eight foot ceilings down there, so it’s like eight feet of water in our house by that point.”
At 5 p.m. after the storm passed, Vinson and her husband made their way to Raleigh, N.C. to stay with her husband’s parents. The next day, they came back to survey the damage.
“We were able to save, probably, I would say, 80 percent of our shoes and clothes, and we were able to save some Christmas decorations. (My husband’s) family has a lot of heirloom Christmas decorations and luckily like all of those made it, which is really good,” Vinson said. “But it did flood about two, one and half to two feet in our living space, and so a lot of the stuff in our living space was covered with water.”
Based on the water lines, Vinson believes the water in the living space rose to around 3 feet before it receded. She says that they lost around 75 to 80 percent of their furnished belongings due to the flooding.
“Anything that was kind of in (the living space) was just completely damaged,” she said. “And by the time we got up there on Saturday, our floors, which were like real hardwood, were all warped and the carpet in the bedroom was completely soaked and muddy, and everything was just covered in this like thick mud.”
Despite the extensive damage to her home and the rift in her living situation over the next few months, Vinson says they are “so so so lucky” compared to other areas impacted by Helene.
“We were able to seek shelter somewhere else. We got our pets out, like that’s my biggest thing. And I just kept saying…before we even got to our house, I was like, all of that stuff is just stuff,” she said. “We can replace stuff. We cannot replace people.”
She also says she has been “blown away” by the “faith in humanity that’s been restored” in the wake of the hurricane.
“We’ve just seen so much generosity. Like us personally…I can never even find the words to say thank you to people…. My husband and I have just been talking about how we are always going to be paying that back for the rest of our lives,” she said.