Our experience with Hurricane Helene

September 25 to October 7, 2024

Prior to the first rains associated with the storm, we had had many days of rain, soaking the ground. We have lived in this house for almost 14 years, and whenever there was a lot of rain, followed by winds above 15-25 mph, trees often fell because their root mass separated from the granite that underlies the soil.

Beginning on Wednesday, September 25, torrential rains came and soaked the ground. At times, it seemed like sheets of water were coming down. This went on over night and into Thursday, September 26. There was a break in the rain and then the actual storm arrived. At first, the winds were not extreme, but the amount of rain was greater than anything we had seen. We lost power briefly on Thursday morning, but it was quickly restored.

The rain continued into Friday and the winds began increasing. We could hear trees falling and objects hitting the roof, and around 3 a.m., we decided to take shelter in the only room in the house that doesn’t have windows — the hall bathroom, where we sat in folding chairs until dawn came and we felt it was safe to go into the rest of the house. We lost all power at 5:02 a.m. and were without power for nearly a week.

When we felt it was safe to pull back the drapes and look out of the windows, the first thing we saw was the back of the garage, which is visible from our dining area. Four trees had fallen onto the roof and crushed it.

Four trees had crushed the roof of the garage.

These photos show the back and front of the house on September 27. A very large oak tree had fallen across the roof and damaged its edges. This caused some water to come down through the walls and drip out of the moldings around two doors in our bedroom, but we were able to collect the water with buckets and dishpans. When it finally stopped raining, the leaks stopped and we dried the carpet with towels. There is still detectible moisture in the walls themselves and under the carpet.

Rear of house, where a large oak had fallen on the roof.

On September 27, there was still a very tall pine leaning toward the house that could fall and crush the roof. I reported this to the owner and the property manager using my cell phone, but nothing was done about it.

If this pine falls, it could crush the roof of the house.

We had the worst damage of all of the houses on this road because we had the most trees around the house. Nonetheless, there were other houses with fewer trees that had to evacuate because a tree broke through their roof entirely.

This is a neighbor’s house. The tree broke from the force of the winds and broke through the roof of the house. The neighbor had to leave the house and go to a motel. Note that the bottom part of the tree is still standing and rooted into the ground. The tree in the foreground toppled because its roots couldn’t hold in the soil, due to the large amount of rain that fell before and during the storm.

This is what we saw when we went inside the garage that first day:

Garage interior before the roof was cleared and the car driven out.

It was when I saw how precisely the roof rafters fell on the car so as to cause the least amount of damage that I intuitively sensed that there was a plan in operation behind all of this.

This is what part of our driveway looked like before it was cleared. There were other trees that had fallen closer to the house and the yard was similarly blocked. There was no way for us to get to the road on foot.

There was no way for us to get to the road on foot and nothing could get to us from the road.

This is some of the debris that was left after the driveway was cleared.

This is a small amount of the debris after the driveway was cleared. There was so much debris everywhere that it looked like a bomb had gone off.

This is our mailbox at the road. When the neighbors were clearing the road (and we were still trapped), our next-door neighbor made sure they didn’t remove the mailbox. Receiving mail made us feel like life was continuing somehow, in spite of everything.

Our mailbox at the road. When I opened it after the driveway had been cleared, there was mail and packages in it. I was surprised that the mail carrier had gotten through. The connection between the bridge and the road had just been repaired that day.

There were three men working together to clear the roof of the garage and get our car out.

The crew of three men, working to clear the roof of the garage.

This is what the garage looked like after they cleared the roof and got the car out.
The freezer with the blankets on it was the one with our food in it. The other one is empty. It was amazing that the food was still frozen after all of that time. Our neighbor told us to put blankets on it and I’m sure that helped. We didn’t open it at all until the time came to hook it up to the generator.

The crew moved the freezer toward the front, where there was still some roof left to protect it. The entire garage will have to be rebuilt, but at least we can make use of it for now.

This is some of the debris behind the garage, after it was cleared. You can get an idea of the size of the trees they had to cut up with chainsaws to clear the roof.

Debris behind the garage after it was cleared. There are logs of this size all over the lot.

We were trapped from Friday morning until Tuesday evening, when a crew cleared the driveway. We lost all cell service in the area on Tuesday morning when a landslide took down all the cell towers that were grouped together on a nearby mountain. We relied on our neighbors for water to flush our toilets and information as to the extent of what had happened and what we could expect.

Power and internet were finally restored at 4:35 p.m. on Thursday, October 3, and cell service came back on Saturday morning, October 5. The clearing and repairs will take many months, possibly years.

We thought the worst was over, but the pine tree that was leaning toward the house fell onto the house at 4:40 a.m. on Monday, October 7, 2024. Once again, while it did a lot of damage to the house, it fell in such a way that everything still works and we can still function here for now. Once again, I felt an unseen force operating behind all that was happening here, and my deeper feeling is that it is leading us toward what we will be doing later on, wherever that takes place.

Peace and blessings,
Sara/Adonna/Oriole

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