This won’t be an astrological writing, but I’ll try to get into the astrology of this tragedy eventually. For now, I need to purge words to make room for astro thoughts.
Its time, even though I don’t know if I’m ready to write since we’re currently just still right smack in the middle of things. I’m finally at a computer. So many things that are vastly different than one long week ago…like sitting at a computer. Or flushing a toilet or turning the light switch on when you walk into a room. All things that are not possible in my home, so we drove a few hours away to 1)take a break 2)take a shower 3) finish the reservations of a beautifully looming trip to Ireland & the UK soon.
If the way that you’re reading this feels a bit Willy Wonka, no time is making sense, is time linear or wtf…it is because I am writing with storm-adrenaline still. Thoughts are disjointed as the earth underneath has been disrupted.
Let me back up. I live in Asheville, NC and a week ago a massive storm hit my town and surrounding hills in ways that modern times has no reference. They call the flood “Biblical”, a 1000-5000 year storm, “unprecedented”, “unbelievable” etc… When you describe it to someone you would use these words and partially it is because we are all still in shock at what is currently happening. People are still trapped, still starving, still dehydrated, still running out of oxygen & insulin, still cut off from roads washed out, mudslides all around, trees on top of their cars etc. Because this storm hit such a wide area of Western North Carolina (WNC) the access from one affected area to the next might be 100 miles as the crow flies, the response to all of the injured areas is spread so thin. It’s like dropping beads into sand and needing to rescue all of them at the same time.
To get into any of the worst hit areas, you’re crossing water. All of the settlements were built around water. Many of the neighborhoods and streets have the closest body of water in their name. Water is everywhere and so it rose everywhere. Up to 30 inches of rain fell into these hills and there was no preparation for that amount of rain all at once. Friends were woken up to water in their bedroom and had to crawl out of their balconies to escape a flood in their apartments. Friends had to hack their way out of their roof with a kitchen knife because the floods caught them off guard. The snaps and cracks of the trees giving way are etched into the nervous systems of nearly everyone. The sweet ground under which we walk turned into a wave of violent action, sometimes taking people into it and sometimes sparing lives in a lucky moment of escape.
One friend has the only house on her street not destroyed by the river. One friend watched her car float away but her cabin, now on a solitary island, is still standing. One friend had their fields uprooted and covered in mud, crops destroyed, structures in unknowable condition. The rest of us, if we aren’t on that far end of the trauma spectrum of losing our lives or watching family members scream as they get washed away in the muddy waters, the rest of us scramble to the edge, where our own structures are in unknowable condition. We’re all sitting on the edges, we ourselves are debris of this storm, covered in mud and nervous systems are shot.
After the waters began to recede, the first mode of action was trying to get in touch with everyone to make sure they were alive. This was an anxious and frustrating thing to attempt because no one had service. When a text would come in, it would repeat 7 or 8 times or it would arrive 12 hours later. The amount of trees laying on the roads, in every single neighborhood, was shocking. Seeing the root balls tipped over and exposing the broken earth plus if that tree was sitting on a house, on a power line, inside of a car (there was one car on Leicester Hwy that was fatally impaled on a huge tree) The roads themselves were littered with every thing, causing flat tires everywhere (with no tire stores open to fix) The power itself not even on for the hospital to function. The hospital, ok, that’s an entire storm altogether: staff were not allowed/couldn’t leave. There’s no water, no power, Emergency room filled up with anyone who could make it there. The staff were working days on top of days without relief, without water or full power (generator helped) and they were sending people (many laboring women) via helicopter to other hospitals for care. The hospital had it’s own tree cutting crew to help remove the trees down on campus. All of this was learned by listening to people’s stories on the radio. So, I don’t know how much of this is true, embellished, not even close to what happened or if it was worse. The underlying issue is the lack of communication across the board, across counties, across the entire region.
I was listening to the EMS scanners (not recommended) and the closest scanner I could hear was two counties over. The Viper systems went down in my county & the one just south of us. Entire counties were offline and only texting 911 was an option for people to call for rescue (Did you know you could text 911?) I’ve read EMS dispatch stories that talk about the wave of calls that came in during the storm and then the connection was lost. Counties rallied together and relayed information as best they could. But you could only hear these if you had access to the scanners, had internet to stream it etc…
The only communication that went out to the public was the broadcast on the radio. Channels 99.1 FM & 570 AM began broadcasting (thanks to Starlink connection) and ran a 5 AM-11 PM broadcast simply updating the listeners with whatever information came through. If you had a phone, you could call in looking for loved ones, the DJs would field calls getting information about neighborhoods and regions. Public officials would call in to give live information to listeners. The radio was the life line for the communities that could tune in. Many folks would sit in their cars charging their phones and could only access radio. Finding a battery radio was the biggest quest of one of my days helping my elderly neighbor. When I sat with her, she said that she was just sitting at her electric piano playing the keys even though it wasn’t making any sound. She was bored and anxious, my visits were the only ones she had until her niece could make it out of her driveway. When I brought her a radio we found, with bright new batteries, she said “I could kiss you!”
It was the ground beneath us that was disrupted, it was the lack of information beyond the streets you could walk to, it was the water that carved new pathways of flow, it was the darkness at night combined with the ceaseless sound of sirens. This is the terroir of the storm.
There wasn’t a shortage of gas, but there was no electricity to operate the pumps. Folks who had wells couldn’t run their water. Trash hasn’t been picked up so there are more run ins with curious and hungry bears. Cans full of food that has gone rotten from no power all week. Tetanus shots are part of everyday conversation. The mud is apparently toxic past the Woodfin section of the river where the PVC plant dumped a ton of caustic solvents into the water, causing work boots to melt in destroyed, mud covered Marshall. People have been scraping mud out of buildings and off of possessions for days without any PPE and coming out with burns on their skin. Now that the mud is dry, it is turning into dust and spreading its particles in the air. Marshall residents are now covered and masked.
I live in West Asheville, the biggest issue for my neighborhood are the trees down+power out but then also the concentrated human element. The population is tense, there have been at least two murders (something we don’t really experience much here). There have been shoot outs over gas, fights at stores, people are desperate and all thrown together. Kids are out of school “indefinitely”. Farmers, artists, self employed folks, restaurant workers, bus drivers, everyone are all out of work without any hope in sight of when they’ll begin to make money again. I only began to think about this a day or so ago. I work hard at multiple jobs to make the life for myself and my family. I had to cancel all of my readings scheduled because I had no power or internet. I wasn’t sure when I could reschedule them so they’re all just TBD once the water recedes and the dust settles.
When we drove a few hours to have these luxuries of water and power, I told myself that I would write out what I could, what I remembered and just share it here. It feels good to type with all of my fingers and not just my thumbs on a phone. I will share some of the magic next, but I wanted to get the chunks of debris out of the way first. I wanted to write about the stage and I’ll set the characters down next. Thanks for reading, and I’ll take all of your prayers and support. <3
Christa
Been thinking of you Christa. Thanks for sharing.
Supposedly I am subscribed to your posts, but I didn't get this one in my email. Wonder if all the weirdness is affecting Substack somehow. Thanks for sharing your experiences.