In the days immediately after the storm, local telephone, internet and cellular communications were mostly dead in my county. Even the police and fire departments were reduced to only handheld radios and Starlink kits. Sending texts felt like putting messages in a bottle: Sometimes they reached their recipients, but the majority just disappeared. So when my teenage son’s teacher reached out, requesting help for a friend, his text message felt like something we should respond to in person.

“Go to downtown Marshall tomorrow, and ask for Mallory. Tell her I sent you. Bring shovels.”

Our family moved to North Carolina in 2006, partially to get away from the constant cycle of boarding up our house and fleeing inland during Florida’s intensifying hurricane seasons. We were tired of the stress, and it was becoming difficult hold onto homeowner’s insurance. Starting a new life near Asheville—2,100 feet above sea level and hundreds of miles from any coast—was an appealing change of pace.

This area regularly receives the remnants of hurricanes and tropical storms, usually in the form of strong but sporadic downpours that barely last a day. But Helene was built different. Rain had been drumming down for two days while the rapidly intensifying hurricane continued drawing strength from record warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Atlantic hurricane seasons of the 2020s totaled almost twice as many major hurricanes (with winds more than 111 miles per hour) as the 1970s. The surge of more-intense storms is exactly what climate scientists have been warning we should expect to see in the face of a changing climate and off-the-charts temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. But until September 27, 2024, I thought my days of tracking storms and hurricane cleanup were long behind me.

The morning after Luke received the text from his teacher, we drove to Marshall. It’s only about 10 minutes from our relatively undamaged neighborhood, but it felt like a world away. The devastation forced us to park and enter town on foot. The main road was covered in mud piled like snow drifts, deposits from the nearby French Broad River, which was now back between its banks 50 yards away. And farther down, the town that we visited so many times barely was recognizable.

We asked where we could find Mallory, and people pointed us down the town’s main street. In such a small place as Marshall, everyone knows each other.

The two-lane street was covered in deep mud, downed powerlines, overturned vehicles and some buildings were simply gone. A makeshift army of volunteers and people driving construction equipment were doing projects on every block. Some folks set up barbecue grills on the sidewalk to serve free hotdogs to the workers. It looked and sounded like absolute neighborly chaos.

We passed the town’s new little noodle soup restaurant, where we had eaten about a week before the storm. High-water lines ran about 7 feet up the walls; the place was almost entirely gutted. When we found Mal’s Bar, it was also empty, save for some salvaged furniture and billiard cues propped in the corner. All the drywall had been removed, and volunteers had already shoveled the mud out into the street.

People were standing outside. “Oh, Mallory? I saw her down the street helping someone else,” a woman in jeans and muck boots told us. “But if you’re here to help, go to the volunteer tent, get some PPE and then jump in with that crew across the street. And watch out for the vehicles, there’s a lot of stuff moving here.”

After getting heavy-duty latex gloves and N95 masks, we walked over to a two-story brick building that had previously housed a steel fabrication business and some woodworkers. About 20 young men and women were inside the dark space, filling, moving and emptying wheelbarrows full of mud while a worksite stereo blasted a mix of reggae and country music. The river mud was slick as grease and about a foot deep throughout the building. The mud smelled foul, like the inside of a garbage can.

Everything got tossed onto the sidewalk—one pile for solid debris and one for mud—where a guy driving a backhoe eventually loaded it into a line of waiting dump trucks and pickup trucks.

After a few hours, the building was as clean as we could get it with shovels. The rest would have to wait for a pressure washer, but no one knew when the town’s water would be turned back on.

Hurricane Helene reshaped the local landscape, riverbeds, forests, families, towns and economies. It is forcing conversations here about what should be rebuilt and how that should be done, given this painful new reality where a changing climate touches us all. In this new age of extremes, the rivers will go where they want, and Southern Appalachia is not nearly as hurricane-proof as many previously thought.

The climate will test our capacity—not just in these mountains, but in cities and towns all around the world—to support one another in the face of tragedy. Floods. Storms. Wildfires. Droughts.

Whether working to reduce our carbon footprint or helping clean up after disasters strike, our decisions and actions can build strong and resilient communities. Planning and prevention are always easier than rescue and restoration.  

We never found Mallory that day, but we promised ourselves we would visit her bar for a game of pool if it ever reopens.