Storm debris and ruined household goods are common throughout disaster areas. (Greg Childress/NC Newsline)
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — On the morning that Hurricane Helene dumped historic rainfall on western North Carolina, Robert Tallman found himself trapped on the porch of his home in a Hendersonville mobile home park for low-income seniors.
Tallman also manages the park — Hendersonville Mobile Estates — just off of Spartanburg Highway.
His ordeal began after he walked onto the porch of the old farmhouse/rental office where he lived in an efficiency apartment to warn tenants that it was time to evacuate to higher ground.
That’s when a big gust of wind blew the door shut, he said, and a bookcase fell over and blocked the door from inside so he could not reenter the house. A picnic table pushed around by swirling wind blocked a rear entrance.
So, a few hours later, locked out of the house and standing in chin-deep flood waters with rain still falling, the 79-year-old Tallman had what he thought was a final conversation with God.
“Well, Lord, I guess I’ll be talking to you in a few minutes face-to-face, because it’s up to my chin and it’s still pouring,” Tallman said. “Just then, it was like he [God] turned it off. The rain stopped and a glimmer of sunlight came through and I said, ‘Wow, fast answer, thank you sir.’”
Life in a “FEMA motel”
Tallman and others forced to leave the mobile home park are now living in hotel rooms paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and that’s where they’ll be on Thanksgiving — likely feasting on dinners provided by churches and nonprofits.
The residents have lived in a “FEMA motel” as it is referred to for more than a month. They moved in after temporary shelters set up to house displaced residents right after the storm closed.
“Some of them [tenants] are still dazed, kind of like a fish out of water, flopping around,” Tallman said when asked about the general mood of people in the hotel. “We went from being in comfortable housing and with food and everything to essentially street people with no transportation, no place to live, nothing.”
Of course, the FEMA motel is not home, Tallman said, but tenants from the mobile home park and others displaced by the storm are grateful for shelter.
More importantly, they are thankful for life.
“There were many that died, but we’re alive,” Tillman said. “We may not have anything, but of course, we didn’t have much to begin with, so we didn’t lose that much, but we’re alive and all the rest is replaceable.”
An existing affordable housing problem is worsened
About two-thirds of the mobile home park’s 70 or so residents were impacted by the storm, Tallman said.
Low-lying areas in the park suffered the greatest damage. Some units have been condemned and it’s unclear whether they’ll be replaced. Homes on higher ground appear untouched.
The loss of any of the park’s rental units will deal a big blow to the affordable senior housing in Hendersonville, Tallman said. The owner has worked to keep rents low, he said, with many tenants paying under $500 a month.
“Seniors were having a horrible time getting housing and this location is optimal because you know as we age, we can’t drive like we used to and everything is convenient and affordable,” Tallman said. “This is a centralized place that they can walk to the grocery store, to the doctor’s clinic. They can walk to nearly anything they need and if they want to go somewhere, they can get on the bus and go anywhere in town they need to go.”
In Henderson County, 44% of renters have difficulty affording their home, according to the North Carolina Housing Coalition. Families are considered “cost-burdened” when they spend more than 30% of income on housing and utilities.
Help comes too late for one resident
Tallman was rescued by first responders in boats after about eight hours in the water. Help came too late, however, for tenant Vicki Allen and her dog Sophie.
Allen was standing on her porch attempting to leave when strong winds and rushing water snapped it loose from her mobile home. She and Sophie were swept away in the fast-moving water.
“We found Sophie wedged in a tree behind one of the trailers and after the water receded. We found Vicki [Allen] out behind the workshop,” Tallman said.
Tallman had sternly warned Allen to stay put until the rescue boats arrived. He’d been in contact with rescuers off and on with a cell phone he placed on a ledge just out of reach of the rising water.
“I told her to not get into that water, because it was super contaminated and that it was moving faster than any professional swimmer can swim,” Tallman said. “I said, ‘If you get into that water, you’re a dead person.’”
Merrie Slusarczyk and Allen were friends. The night before the park flooded, Slusarczyk invited Allen to ride out the storm with her, but Allen declined. Slusarczyk lives in a part of the park that was mostly unharmed by the storm.
“She [Allen] wouldn’t go to people’s houses, she was funny,” said Slusarczyk, who also warned Allen to wait for rescue boats.
The 1940s-era mobile home park has flooded before but never to the extent that it did during Hurricane Helene, Slusarczyk said.
“I didn’t realize how bad the storm was going to be. No one did,” Slusarczyk said. “We’ve always had flooding. We’re on a flood plain, but we’ve never had to totally evacuate.”
The recovery continues
Throughout hard-hit parts of Hendersonville, large piles of storm debris and spoiled household goods serve as reminders of the havoc Helene wreaked on the small city of approximately 15,500 that is about 30 miles south of Asheville and 20 miles north of the South Carolina border.
At nearly every turn, dump trucks and earth moving equipment are busy with clean-up efforts.
Amid the chaotic, harried recovery, businesses and residents appear to be making considerable progress toward a return to normalcy.
The mobile home park is a short walk from Southside Square shopping center, which saw heavy flooding during the storm. The retail center is anchored by a Harris Teeter, which is closed for repairs. A mobile pharmacy has been set up in front of the grocery store so that customers can still pick up prescriptions.
Across the parking lot from the Harris Teeter, a UPS Store was doing brisk business from the sidewalk on a damp Wednesday morning. Inside the gutted store, workers were busy making repairs.
UPS store manager Corey Stanford said it is important for the store to continue to operate because it’s the only one in Hendersonville.
“We do hundreds and hundreds of shipments on any given day, and it would really be a disservice to the community if we weren’t here,” Stanford said. “We’ve been open pretty much since a week after the storm and operating on a temporary basis [from the sidewalk] but we should be fully opened next week.”
At the Henderson County Disaster Recovery Center in the Blue Ridge Commons complex on Asheville Highway, a steady stream of residents pour in each day to sign up for state, federal and local aid. The complex house’s FEMA’s disaster recovery operations.
Initially, residents showed up to apply for the FEMA’s $750 “Serious Need Assistance,” which is a direct payment to disaster survivors to use for emergency needs in the days after the storm.
The needs have changed as the recovery effort has begun to move to next phase.
“There’s a lot of people in hotels right now, and so, we had a housing crisis in this community before the storm. We had a lack of affordable housing and that hasn’t gotten better, so piecing together what that mid-range temporary housing is going to be is a need,” said Sarah Kowalak, a Henderson County emergency management planner who co-manages this disaster center.
Kowalak said that residents are now coming to the center for help with rebuilding private roads and bridges, which FEMA can help them with.
Disaster survivors are still seeking help with major repairs because many of them did not have flood insurance, she said.
La-Tanga Hopes, a public affairs specialist with FEMA, said the agency at one point saw 300 to 400 disaster survivors per day at the Henderson County recovery center. Since the beginning of the disaster Hopes said FEMA has “accommodated and provided services and funding” to 135,000 people.
“America being America”
Tallman chuckles when told that Slusarczyk calls him a hero.
“If you want to talk about unsung heroes, think of all the poor people who got hit like this and they went back to America being America,” Tillman said. “You’ve got neighbors helping each other get back on their feet and get back going.”
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