Complimentary Story
I wonder how many of you are truly aware of the immense tragedy that occurred in the Southern Appalachian region on 9/27/2024. I’m sure the coastal regions further south experienced destruction as well, but, I’m here to tell you, the extent and amount of devastation that occurred in areas of the Southern Appalachian region is “of nearly biblical proportions.”The destruction was so terrible and extreme that it causes one to wonder whether “supernatural phenomena” might have occurred. In other words, this was a life altering event in both scope and scale, and in my opinion, the long term effects that this will have on the survivors will have much in common with the people who survived the attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. Let me explain.
Understand that I grew up in the coastal city of Mobile, Alabama, located at the entrance to Mobile Bay, which is just “a stone’s throw” from the Gulf of Mexico. Some folks consider this region as “Hurricane Alley.” Dealing with hurricanes down there is, for the most part, just a normal burden of life that is expected and anticipated to occur every so often. I spent nearly three and a half decades of my life down there, and during that time I’ve ridden out my share of hurricanes and storms.
Hurricane Frederick of 1979 was the worst to hit Mobile during my lifetime, for it was a category 4 storm, and the eye of the storm passed directly over the city. The home which we lived in at the time of Frederick was located across the street from an 18-hole golf course and just down the street from a large city park. I was only a child at that time, but I remember being told that there were approximately 5,000 mature southern pine trees that were downed from the storm just in the area of the city park and the golf-course. I don’t doubt that to be true, for I still have a photo somewhere of that golf course after the storm, and the fairway of the course is mostly covered in multiple layers of fallen trees, one upon another. But that is another story. I only mentioned that to provide you some background information before reporting this… that the extent of damage caused by Hurricane Frederick, especially in regard to water damage, is not even comparable to the extent of damage that I have witnessed here in the Southern Appalachian region following Hurricane Helene. So, let us now attend to this story.
After moving from south Alabama almost 18 years ago, I relocated to upper-east Tennessee where I live today. In this Southern Appalachia region, we never worry about having any significant storm damage from hurricanes or tropical storms. For the most part, we are extremely blessed not to have many significant weather events to worry about; this is a region where even damaging tornados are a rarity, and any significant earthquakes have been nearly non-existent since the days of Tennessee’s favored son, David Crockett. So when the people around here got the news of Hurricane Helene heading our way, our biggest concern was “how long will our power be out?” — mainly because it seems that most anytime the wind blows through the mountain hollers, many folks always seem to lose power for a time.
For the most part, we were thinking that we needed to make a run to the store to get some extra food supplies. Make sure the generator was operable. Fill propane tanks or bottles and any spare fuel cans. Bring the plastic lawn chairs in close to the house, and park the car in a place where it might be safe from any random tree limb that might come down as the storm blows over.
In regard to worrying about flooding that could occur as a result of heavy rain… even if you lived on the upper banks of the river, the main things that you’d worry about was stuff such as having to move the boat a little further up into the yard, a good ways from the water’s edge, and making sure it was tied-off to a tree or post. Bring the round bales of hay up from any fields along the low areas to higher ground, along with any livestock that you may have enclosed in pens located in low lying areas. Making sure that the tractor was out of the lower field, and that the firewood was off the ground and covered, along with the feed and fertilizer. And if the water should rise to levels significantly higher than normal, that’d mean that the lower field might be underwater by an inch or two, and the chicken pen might flood and cause the chickens to be stuck up on their roosts for a while. The roads and bridges in the lowest places might be impassible for a maybe a day or so. The cornfield would be too soggy for the locals to come visit the corn maze until it dries out. If you live on a hill and have a gravel driveway, a big nuisance that often occurs during flooding conditions is that the heavy rains will likely wash a lot of your gravel down the hill, causing you the painstaking work of having to replace it after the storm, and compacting it back into place. It’s definitely no fun to have a big storm come through, but for most, it’s not a significant worry around these parts. Most times you are even expected to report to work as normal; this was indeed the case for many on the morning of 9/27/2024.
Here in southern Appalachia, at day break on the morning of 9/27/2024, the day started off fairly normal for most of us that lived well away from the river. As for myself, I live about 29 miles from the river. On this day, I had an appointment to take my vehicle to the local Ford dealership to have a safety recall performed. My appointment was at 10 AM, so with it raining and the forecast indicating more rain and wind on the way, I figured I’d better call the service center and see if they still planned to be open for business. I called, and they confirmed that my appointment remained on schedule for 10 AM. I looked at the forecast and decided that I’d drive on over there, tough it out through the rain, and get the work performed. En route, I saw that there was already a power outage in one part of town, but this wasn’t unusual for a stormy day. When I arrived at the service center, I was informed that the mechanic assigned to perform the work, had not arrived; he was stranded at his home due to waters flooding the area where he lives. As it turns out, he lives up in the mountains near the border of upper-east Tennessee and western North Carolina. I was told that we’d have to reschedule the repair for another time. Little did I know that it would be several weeks before that mechanic would be able to return to work.
I left out from there and elected to run a few errands in the area of Kingsport, while the rain continued. Eventually, the rain passed. On the way home, I drove through some low lying areas near Horse Creek, and found that even the lowest of roads in my route weren’t flooded. That was a bit surprising, but not completely unexpected, for I could tell by looking at the clouds, that the outer bands of the storm were passing overhead. We’d not taken a direct hit. When I arrived home, I found our gravel driveway to be in good repair, our home was undamaged, and even our plastic lawn chairs were still in place up against the side of the house. Hallelujah! I was mighty thankful for this blessing.
At that time, I had no idea that just 29 miles away, nearly unimaginable devastation had occurred. Many lives were lost, and a great many lives were changed forever. It was not until much later in the day that I discovered that devastation had occurred in areas nearby.
Now, understand as we go forward that there is just too much information to cover here in regard to the extent of devastation; so, in order to prevent this article from being too lengthy, I’ll continue by providing some pertinent details, and insert some of my own thoughts along the way. I’ll refer to some cities and locations by name, but for the most part, much of the destruction reported here represents what has occurred in many and various locations within the devastation area which generally extends from Asheville, NC to the south, to Jonesborough, TN to the north, to Chilhowie, VA to the east, and to Newport, TN to the west. Please, kindly pardon me if I left any devastated areas out of this specified region. Most of the devastation occurred in the low lying areas along the creeks, tributaries and rivers within the mountains. This was mostly due to flooding, but massive landslides were also a major contributor to the devastation.
The towns of Jonesborough and Embreeville, TN are located within 30 miles of my home; it troubled my soul to find out that lives were lost there, and that human bodies displaced from other areas upstream had washed into and through the area. On Sept 26, the day before the storm arrived, it had already been raining for the most part of two days, and the rain continued; the water levels in some of the rivers had already risen above the normal high water levels. By that evening, and as night time approached, the water levels began to rise to a level of major concern. Those who didn’t already have water lapping against their porches, went to bed wondering just how high the water would get.
By morning, in the mountainous areas of the region, the water in the rivers had not only risen many feet in depth, the water had risen to levels which had not been witnessed during the lifetime of the folks who are alive today! By the end of day on September 27, the water level of the Pigeon River running through Newport, TN reportedly rose to a peak level of 29.72 feet; that is 5.5 feet higher than the previous record set in 1904! Sixty miles to the east, in Erwin, TN, the Unicoi County Hospital was massively flooded, and had to be evacuated. The people who could not get to higher ground in time literally had to be rescued from the roof! An internet search on this matter revealed the following information: “The Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee was notified to evacuate at around 9:30 AM local time on Friday due to flooding from the Nolichucky River: The flooding was caused by heavy rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. The Nolichucky River was flowing at a rate of 140,000 gallons per second, which is twice the rate of Niagara Falls.”
Some folks are not aware that prior to the hurricane arriving, the Southern Appalachian region had experienced much rain during the preceding three days, and then, as the storm brought all that warm moisture with it up from the Gulf of Mexico, it traveled quickly inland, but then it kind of stalled a bit as it crossed over the mountainous areas. That warm moisture arrived at the tall mountain peaks which rise upwards of 4000 feet above sea level in places, causing the warmer air to be pushed and forced up into the higher elevations, causing it to rapidly condense, and resulting in massively dense and heavy amounts of rain to fall into the already well saturated mountainous region.
There are many dams in the region which the Tennessee Valley Authority oversees. The TVA is responsible for controlling water levels best that they can. Apparently, the extremely heavy amounts of rain falling in such a short time span must have caused this to be an uncontrollable and overwhelming chore, for eventually the water began to over-top the dams. The high winds downed massive amounts of trees in the areas of higher elevations. Way up toward the tops of mountains, so much water was falling from the sky that the underground springs overflowed and burst forth, resulting in massive landslides. The land of the forest became too saturated, causing the soil to “give way” or “let loose” from the bedrock, along with the trees, shrubs, boulders, and rocks that were also present. Once the flow of debris started down the mountain, it pulled everything it it’s path down with it.
Imagine a giant locomotive engine formed of water, mud, rocks, boulders, trees, and logs coming down the slope from a steep mountain top, roaring down toward the river bottom at high speed, and taking everything out that happens to be in its path; leaving a corridor of destruction behind, that in some cases was wider than a football field! Whether it be a roadway, a bridge, a train trestle, a home, or a building; whatever was in its path was destroyed! Many landslides occurred.
Some homes that were not even flooded or harmed by wind, were “taken out” by some of these landslides. There were people who were reportedly swept away and buried by the debris. Survivors report that they could hear a massive roar approaching, and then the devastation would suddenly and swiftly come upon them! Those who were in homes that took a direct hit from a landslide had very little chance of survival. In many cases, the debris would find its way right into the river, causing the waters of the river to not only rise suddenly, but with all the debris added would cause the waters to become much more destructive.
And when the water levels began to rise, they rose at rates and quantities that were considerably out of the norm. I heard a report of a man and woman who were on their front porch, watching the water levels in the river rise. The man was looking up-stream through the rain; he heard a sound of roaring coming, and then saw the trees up on the mountain move in a very strange and unusual way. He immediately told his wife that they should go inside the house. Only four or five seconds later, the house burst into pieces around them. He was knocked unconscious for a time; when he came to, his wife and child were gone. He somehow survived, but his wife and child did not. Some people might say, “well, that is just what you get for living along the banks of a river,” but in my opinion, when the river waters rise to levels higher than what has ever been recorded in modern history, then it’s not so much due to someone’s failure to plan and prepare. How can you plan or prepare for that? How do you protect your family from that? Wouldn’t that be sort of like saying that the victims who worked in the twin towers on 9/11 got killed or injured as a result of their own lack of ability to make good choices?
These were events of which one just could not prepare for the destruction that was coming upon them, because the cause of the destruction was completely out of the realm of what they knew to be “a normal happening.” It’d be mighty difficult to plan for incidences the likes of these. The flooding was immense and caused catastrophic damage. Some towns were flooded to unprecedented levels, with water rising high into the second stories of buildings. Washed away were bridges, homes, properties, buildings, roadways, automobiles, railroads, railcars, tractor trailers, recreational vehicles, industries, farms, farm equipment, retaining walls, septic systems, propane tanks, fuel tanks, storage containers, businesses with everything in them, etc. The list goes on and on.
Many communities, towns, and cities within the region were highly impacted, if not completely devastated! Lakes were filled with acres and acres of debris of all kinds, some of which floats and some of which sinks. The river waters were more violent than most can imagine. Automobiles which were swept away were later found looking as if they had been put through some kind of shredder or compactor. Persons that were swept down river, in many cases did not fare any better than these vehicles. Some of the unfortunate souls who did not survive the storm may never be seen again, for their bodies could be trapped under the waters of the lakes and rivers, or buried on the lake bottom beneath layers of earth and debris.
A quick internet search provided the following information regarding some of the infrastructure damage as a result of the storm. “The storm damage in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene swept through on September 27 was immense. More than 1,000 bridges, some 5,000 miles of state-owned roads, 160 water and sewage systems, and an estimated 126,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.”
Keep in mind that this is reporting only the numbers for North Carolina. And what about the railroad? An internet search provided an AI Overview which reported 40 miles of CSX’s former Clinchfield Railroad were destroyed, and roughly 50 miles of Norfolk Southern tracks were impacted. This surely seems like a matter of major concern, economically for certain and potentially even a regional, if not a national major safety concern. So why don’t we hear more about all of this on mainstream news? I reckon this would be the subject for an entirely separate article.
How mind-blowing this must have been to the people who thought they were safe and well prepared to ride out what they considered to be a moderate weather event blowing through the region. The people that live along the rivers in these mountains thought they were living in about the safest place in America, where the only thing that they really ever had to worry about in regard to their physical safety was trying to avoid having an automobile accident, a hunting accident, having a heart attack, or getting admitted into a modern day hospital during a so-called “scam-demic!” I’m quite serious when I say that these folks thought that they were living in one of the safest places in the world, which is precisely why they chose this place to live.
In the mountains of a conservative southern state, in the heart of “the Bible belt,” a region that many people refer to as “God’s country.” So imagine living here, possibly for your entire life up to this point, and having all that you need in place to ride the storm out inside your home, with your wife and children by your side — and the next thing that you know, a wall of mud and debris comes crashing through your home, from either the hill behind you, or by way of the river suddenly coming out of its banks and rising to levels reaching 29 feet up into the trees! Your vehicles are floating down the river along with everything else that you own! You try to get your family to higher ground, fighting against the current, but the water is too strong, and the debris is beating against you from one direction while you are swept in another direction against trees, boulders, fence posts, farm equipment, or anything else that is in your path! You want to help your family, but there is no way for you to do any more than just try to stay conscious and try to survive as you are swept away from them, downstream within the torment of the river! And if you happened to survive, you may very well have lost family members to the storm, and you may not have a home, a bed, a vehicle, a job, or even your Holy Bible remaining.
Not all the disaster victims had it as bad as others, but there is no doubt that it was a life-changing event for everyone who lived within the devastation area, or anywhere close to the devastation area. I saw a report of a man who said that before the storm, he owned a 1.5 acres of land between the road and the river. He reported that he had a very nice large yard that surrounded a very adequate and sufficient home. After the storm, all that remained of his high ground was small portion of the driveway out near the road; the rest of the high ground, along with everything on it it, was washed away by the waters. All that remains is a well head that is mostly filled with mud, and for the most part a river bed. All that he once owned, with the exception of the vehicle that he escaped in, is gone. He’ll have to make a new start, and mostly from scratch. Most people who lived in these homes were not required to have flood insurance, because they didn’t live in what was considered to be a flood zone at the time; so they likely will not qualify for reimbursement from their insurance companies, for their loss of home and/or contents. When the flood zone is reassessed along the rivers, many of these properties may very well be designated to fall within the limits of the newly established flood zone, and some properties could be designated as being a flood plain. Either way, this would be another major blow that could be crippling to the landowners for various reasons. Many properties are expected to be taken by “imminent domain,” for the building of new roads along the river.
Now let me address the psychological impact that this tragic event could have on those who experienced it firsthand. Does anyone else besides me remember when there were no planes in the sky for at least two days after 9/11/2001? And as the planes resumed flying, did anyone else besides me suspiciously or cautiously keep an eye on low flying planes — especially if they were flying in the vicinity of a city, or a large public gathering of some kind, such as a stadium event? I’ve heard that persons who work in high rise buildings were quite concerned for their safety for years following the 9/11 attack. Fortunately, I’ve not had to work in a high rise. How many people were nervous about flying after 9/11? How long did that nervousness persist in your thoughts? 9/11 was a mighty tragic event which impacted the lives of a great many Americans, and even people around the world. That was a day that changed the course of history for many and the world has somehow seemed different ever since.
Well, for those here in Southern Appalachia, this storm event was similar in many ways, for it completely shattered or tragically impacted the lives of a great many. In the wake of this tragedy, there are persons who are laying down each night and waking up each day without their loved ones lying alongside of them, or even in the room down the hall, for the waters took them. When it starts raining, many begin wondering, when it is going to stop? They ask themselves questions such as, will there be another flood? How high will the river get? What if the dam breaks? Will another landslide come down from the top of the mountain? Is my family safe here where we are? Should we go to higher ground? Will the tractor be okay out in the barn? Do I need to let the animals out of their pens? Do I need to move the vehicles further away from the river? Is it safe to go to sleep? What is that noise that I heard up river? If I rebuild the home, the barn, the shed, the dock, the deck, the porch, the business… will it just get washed away again? Did I make a poor decision which resulted in my family being caught up in this tragedy? Why did I live and they died? Why did my home survive the flood, but my neighbor’s home did not? How will I come back from all of this? How much homeowners insurance is enough? Should I even purchase insurance anymore? Why did God allow this to happen to us? What have I done to deserve this?
And the questions go on and on and on. It is important for us to know and to realize how tragic this event was in the lives of a great many folks. We need to be aware of how much this has impacted their lives, how long it will take for them to rebuild, and how long it will take them to physically, mentally, and spiritually heal. For those who live within the devastation zone, their perspective of history going forward will be divided between the time before Helene and time after Helene — for like 9/11/2001 had that effect on our nation, so has 9/27/2024 affected Southern Appalachia. Let us be good neighbors, sufficient servants, and especially adequate siblings to our fellow Americans, and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us remember to pray for these people who are distressed and suffering during this time of much grief and trouble and let us provide help and support to them in the ways which we are able. When some are faced with this much tragedy in their lives, they tend to either turn closer to Christ, or further away from Christ; let us do our best to lead them toward the Light!
As I travel through and work within the devastated areas, interacting with those who are suffering and in need of assistance, I am working to lead them closer to Christ by gifting out Holy Bibles and a small book called “The Life And Teachings Of Jesus Of Nazareth.” Let us be witnesses of Christ, let us be the salt and light of Appalachia, and let us build up our brothers and sisters with God’s Word! Isaiah 40:28-31, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Amen!
If you would like to participate in the gifting of Bibles and books, or if you would like to volunteer your time and skills to serve in the disaster clean-up and rebuilding efforts, or support worthy ministries working to rebuild and get people who are still living in tents into safe housing, please email me at the following address:
ClayParker@gmx.com
