Good Morning, Friends,

If you haven’t read my previous posts, here’s the situation in a nutshell: we live in a rural mountain community in Swannanoa, NC, where the bridge connecting us to the outside world was swept away during the 1 in 1,000-year flood event caused by Tropical Storm Helene. We’ve also confirmed that a tornado swept through our valley, which explains the large number of trees down on houses and roads.

Arborists in High Demand

One profession in particularly high demand here, post-Helene, is arborists.

As a community, we worked together to clear our road and driveways within days of the storm hitting—an enormous task. But some trees require professional equipment and expertise, especially those needing cranes.

About 80% of the homes in the upper part of our road had trees fall on them, including our two homes—our primary residence and our vacation rental cottage.

At our main house, three trees fell: two landed on our Subaru, and one hit our roof, damaging two solar panels.

Thankfully, after a thorough two-hour inspection by an insurance appraiser, we were relieved to learn there was no structural damage or water penetration.

The vacation cottage wasn’t as fortunate. A tree punched through the master bedroom ceiling. I attempted to trim the branches around the hole, but the weight and tension of the tree made it too dangerous to cut without risking further damage.

In both cases, we need a crane to safely remove the trees.

I’ve been in touch with arborists we’ve used before, but they’re a small company, and the wait could be up to two weeks. With perfectly clear and dry fall weather right now, we knew we had to act quickly before the rains return.

Most arborists in Western North Carolina are so overwhelmed that they’re only doing “chop and drop” jobs—removing trees from homes, dropping them to the side, and moving on. No debris cleanup or additional work.

After numerous calls, we’ve contracted a well-recommended arborist who may be able to remove the trees from both of our houses and two others in the neighborhood.

I should note that any job involving a crane is incredibly expensive, but neither of our insurance companies raised concerns about the cost.

Fingers crossed that the arborists keep their schedule and safely remove the trees. It will be a relief to stop hearing the tree groaning on our roof and to prevent more water damage in the vacation home!

Grid Restoration

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’re incredibly fortunate to have solar power with battery backup. It allows us to live in relative comfort, keeping the fridge and freezer running if we manage our energy use carefully.

It’s now been two weeks without power on our road.

Duke Energy, along with line workers from across the U.S. and Canada, have been working around the clock to restore electricity in Buncombe County.

Yesterday, while we briefly had cell phone service, we received this text:

Duke Energy: We are making more progress than anticipated repairing the considerable damage left by Helene and restoring customers. Of the 50K remaining outages in NC mountains, we estimate restoring about half by Sunday night. The remaining outages will require significant construction of roads, bridges, and/or electrical infrastructure. We will provide you with additional details about your outage as soon as possible. Rest assured we will not stop working until we have restored every customer who is able to receive power.

We’re among those outages that will require major reconstruction of infrastructure.

While we’ve known this from the start, we’ve been holding out some hope as we’ve seen rapid progress on other areas. Some neighbors were thinking we might get power back in a few weeks.

For a few days, hope grew as we saw a parade of line workers along the two-mile stretch of road connecting us to the Bee Tree reservoir and the rest of the world.

Yesterday, while on our way to a 4:00 PM community meeting and potluck, we passed a Duke Energy vehicle on our road for the first time.

One neighbor stopped the worker and asked, “Are you surveying the damage?”

The lineman replied, “I came up here to count how many power poles were destroyed. I stopped counting after ten, further down the road.”

When asked about the timeline for restoration, he said, “I think we’ll be doing well if we can restore power here by Christmas.”

Sobering news, but we weren’t shocked. We’ve all adjusted our expectations, and most of us have some form of backup power. The community meeting and potluck helped keep spirits high.

Ham Radio Workbench

Last night, I had the pleasure of recording an episode of the Ham Radio Workbench podcast. While I’m a regular on the show, this time I was also the guest, sharing my experiences post-Helene and discussing how radio played a crucial role in emergency communication.

It was so energizing to hang out with friends—it was the first “normal” thing I’ve done in two weeks.

Our “priority bandwidth” renewed the previous day, so my connection via Skype was solid. We still have no mobile internet here, only voice and basic texting. So I couldn’t rely on my mobile hotspot as a backup.

The discussion was fantastic, and I feel fortunate we have solar power and satellite internet to make this possible. All other internet here is still down, and it could be that way for a while.

Feeling Fortunate

I was telling George, Vince, Mike, and Mark last night (sadly, Rod was traveling) that for most people, things improve each day after a disaster like this. Recovery is a process. I overheard a Samaritan’s Purse volunteer say to a homeowner whose house flooded, “What happened here was horrible, but you’re a survivor, and your life will improve each day from now.”

It’s a powerful sentiment, but it made me think of those in war zones. For them, there isn’t one event followed by recovery. It’s constant devastation. My friend Wlod (US7IGN) in Kyiv, Ukraine, has lived through years of uncertainty and attacks. Power outages, explosions, and devastation are part of daily life for him.

Natural disasters are tough, but I really feel for those in places where the struggle never seems to end.

Thank You

Once again, we’re overwhelmed by the kindness and support we’ve received. Thank you so much!

I apologize if I haven’t been able to reply to emails and comments—I’m spending most of my energy these days helping my family and neighbors navigate this challenging time.

Have a wonderful week ahead!

Best & 72,
Thomas (K4SWL)

PS: I’ve tagged all of my Post-Helene updates so that you can bookmark this url to read all of them in one collection. Each new update will be included.