A man takes his off-road vehicle down a ruined road in Tennessee. (Photo provided by Ashley Galleher)
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Around 11 a.m. most days of the week at an indoor skatepark and warehouse in Trade, Tenn., the garage door rolls open and community members begin to file in.
On one of those days last week, skatepark owner Ashley Galleher and her friend Valentine Reilly sat behind a table stacked with paper – emergency phone numbers and encouraging messages – and Narcan.
“So what’s the condition of your home?” Galleher asked a visitor.
“It was destroyed,” the man, from Mountain City, Tenn., said.
Across state lines, the impacts were the same: deaths and washed-out roads, destroyed homes, and pummeled infrastructure like water systems.
In Trade, which is an unincorporated town just over the state line from Watauga County, N.C., Galleher owns Zionsville Ramp Company, an indoor skatepark. Now, it’s called Stateline Resource Center.
Trade, as suggested by its name, was traditionally an important mountain trading stop – a crossroads through the rugged high-country landscape. At the base of a long mountain range, it was once a way to get between North Carolina and Tennessee. And now the Stateline Resource Center is a crossroads between Ashe County and western Watauga County, and Johnson County, Tenn.
“A lot of folks work in Boone. They have to come right through Trade,” Galleher said.
Because the roads are so damaged, community members have not been able to cross as easily.
“The people of Trade felt very cut off,” she said.
Route 421 was closed in both directions, isolating Mountain City and Trade from the rest of Tennessee. In the early days, Gallaher found open routes by word of mouth.
“People heard, you can go this way, or that way. Well, people would try to go that way and find out that they couldn’t. The road was washed out in a certain location. They would report back. But by the time they got all the way back here, 30 other cars had tried to go that route because we heard it was open,” she said. “Or when the road crews started coming in to do work, there’s still a communication struggle with how you truly can get somewhere. And it changes every day.”
In other communities in Tennessee, like the rafting community of Hartford in Cocke County, the loss of major thoroughfares like Interstate 40 has isolated people from income and supplies.
Cell and internet service in the region was already spotty, and early in the storm, a large number of cell sites were out. Communication has been a matter of word of mouth.
“Maybe people didn’t realize how bad it was, because a lot of where the damage is in Tennessee is up in hollers,” Reilly said. “It’s up in little, really rural areas.”
Tennessee residents along the state line are often deeply interconnected with North Carolina. In Mountain City and Trade, the nearest major city is Boone, which – before Helene – was a fairly speedy trip of about 15 minutes. Now, the trip is more than an hour.
To compound problems, many affordable retail and grocery outlets, like the still-closed Walmart in Boone, have been flooded, and some dollar stores have occasionally closed or opened at unusual times as staff failed to make it to work. FEMA support is available, but Reilly and Gallaher have encountered uncertainty about the application process, thanks in part to unfounded rumors of FEMA stealing supplies.
FEMA also came to Tennessee later than to N.C. It took Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee two days after Helene hit to declare a major disaster.
The needs are changing – but not decreasing – as the cold sets in at the higher elevations. Visitors to the Stateline Resource Station need warm-weather clothing, propane heaters, and generators. Even as other distribution centers begin to shut down or shift gears, Reilly said Stateline plans to remain open as long as it can.
Stateline Resource Center is open for donation deliveries Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and is open for distribution and pick-up from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
They have also opened a grant fund named for Brittany Robinson, a Watauga County farmer who was killed in a landslide during Helene. Prospective applicants (homeowners and renters) can apply here.