The last days of my stay at the studio in Asheville were quite eventful. Hurricane Helene was a large, destructive, and fast-moving storm that was the strongest to strike Florida on record. It hit Florida Thursday night but before that we, in North Carolina, were already part of the system which was pouring down rain. The rain came down relentless for three days. I never realized that the enormous amounts of water could not get out fast enough and the river banks of The French Broad were overflowing. That is where the River Arts District is located. More than 300 artists have their studios in this region which was an old industrial zone next to the rail road tracks.
While I was listening to the rain on Friday morning 6 am, I heard a dull sound. As soon as it was light I walked outside to see what was going on and saw a big tree blocking the private road we are on. Not too much later the power went out together with a total of 4.2 million people across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
This means that phone connections are lost and soon after that the internet went down. As fast as I could I sent out some messages to loved ones and tried to gather my thoughts. Last thing I saw on the phone was 72 mile per hour winds, which is not that bad but because the soggy soil, trees went down like match sticks. A second tree fell over the first one. No power and no water.
A couple of neighbors with power saws started hacking the trees and I helped them as much as I could with dragging branches to the side of the road. At 2 pm that was practically cleared but now the roads were under water. We couldn’t go anywhere.
On Saturday morning the worst of the floods in our area were gone and I could reach the studio. What I saw was quite shocking. Only two buildings with artists were saved. Northlight studio’s was one of them. The historic flood of 1916 was surpassed with 2 feet of water. The storage where I was bringing all my stuff was dry too. The rest of us were not so lucky. To get a picture of the reality of the scope of this disaster is hard to phantom. Places I knew and loved have just disappeared.
https://youtu.be/xT0t_9DOi6Y?si=G6gsVxVx2XQVoDWA
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