In rural Western North Carolina communities – like Bat Cave in Henderson County – the distance from stores and supplies has made it even more difficult for residents to recover from Hurricane Helene.
Monday night, Henderson County commissioners held a community meeting to hear from dozens of Bat Cave and Gerton residents about what they want recovery to look like.
Residents of the two unincorporated communities are dealing with property damage and debris while navigating one-lane roads that until recently, were impassable. Piles of asphalt and guardrails can be seen in the river that cuts through the community.
Ronald Sobin is an assistant chief with the all-volunteer Bat Cave Fire Department. Getting highways cleared and repaired, he said, should be one of the biggest priorities.
“That’s going to be one of the bigger things towards normalization,” he told BPR. “It’s going to get really, really clustered… for the next couple of years, it’s going to be difficult to get around with all the construction.”
Sobin lost his driveway during the storm but his house wasn’t damaged, despite a landslide that rushed in front of it.
“ Maybe 10 days before the storm, I woke up in the middle of the night with a very vivid nightmare of landslides,” he said. “I haven’t had a nightmare since I was 5 years old…and I woke up with my heart pounding, running away from landslides. Some kind of premonition, or God was trying to tell me something, you know?”
Sobin and the about 30 other volunteer firefighters – including his wife Beverly – spent days hiking and chainsawing their way through the roads of the community to help evacuate the area.
County meeting gives residents microphone
Outside the Bat Cave Baptist Church, Helen Pace leaned on the bed of a pickup truck and jotted down notes in her spiral notebook. She was preparing questions and gathering information on how to help other residents.
“ I take it everywhere with me because my brain is like a colander since the storm: only the really big things stay in. All the small stuff just, whoop, falls right out the bottom,” she said.
Pace lives on the border of Bat Cave and Edneyville in Henderson County. Since the storm, her photography business hasn’t had any new clients.
She came to the county commissioners meeting to push for financial help for the community of a few hundred people.
“ I mean, there’s all of this money that’s been pledged to North Carolina by our government and nobody’s seen any of it,” she said. “Nobody knows how to access it. The help that’s needed is financial.”
Gerard Albert III
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BPR News
Pace started a nonprofit – MOMS WNC – to help connect folks with resources and said the meeting in Bat Cave was a step in the right direction for commissioners.
“ We are here rebuilding people’s driveways, gutting people’s homes, mucking mud out. I’m connected with many, many people and I don’t even know what the resources are…That’s why a lot of people are coming here,” she said. “This is the first really, I think, concerted effort to push information out into this area in five months.”
The meeting offered an opportunity for residents to voice their suggestions for the recovery process. Bat Cave resident David Roland owns Maple Tree Produce – a roadside stand where he sells what he grows. He had a specific request to help his business recover: removing road closed signs on U.S. 64 near his business. He worries that the signs are keeping potential customers away.
“When this first happened, that was absolutely 100 percent necessary to block the road up there. But the road is now clear down to those points. And so those signs need to get gone,” he told commissioners.
County Manager John Mitchell orchestrated the meeting. When residents had specific questions, like Roland, he pointed them toward a county official who could help.
Mitchell stressed to the crowd of about 100 residents that the county was only in charge of a small number of recovery duties. Most of the financial and infrastructure needs will come from the federal or state government, he told them.
“ Any resources that can come from the federal or state government, uh, to help alleviate these issues are going to be very much appreciated,” he said. “We wanted to be here tonight to hear from the residents, let them know how they can speak with us.”
The county is forming a community-led recovery plan – dubbed the Hickory Nut Gorge Recovery Plan – and leaders said they welcome input from residents.
