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Q&A: The Early Days of Hurricane Recovery in Western North Carolina [1]
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Date: 2024-10-11
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Callie Pruett Schwaber is a political consultant and former host of Appodlachia. She also grew up in Canton, North Carolina, a town about 17 miles west of Asheville that was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. I spoke with Callie on October 6, 2024, about what it was like to watch from afar as disaster struck her hometown, and what cleanup efforts look like now.
The Daily Yonder: Can you start just by telling me a little about yourself?
Callie Pruett Schwaber: I currently live in Charleston, West Virginia, but I grew up in Canton, North Carolina and that’s where my parents are. So during this whole event, we’ve been in West Virginia and they’ve been in Haywood County.
And then just a little bit of background on me. I am an Appalachian advocate and storyteller. I have worked on podcasts and as executive director of nonprofits throughout the region, and I’m now the principal of my own political consultancy, Politicary.
Callie Pruett Schwaber. (Photo provided)
DY: Where were you during the storm? Was Charleston hit at all? And how aware were you of the risks faced by your hometown?
CPS: We were really aware and we were tracking the storm. My parents have seen a decline in cell phone service for a long time. My parents have Verizon phones and Verizon internet and for a while they’ve had glitches in the system and it goes out really easily when there’s a storm. And so they actually had us watching the storm to make sure that we had radar, so that if they did lose contact that they would have some idea of what was going on. So we were keeping in close touch with my parents.
In Charleston we did not receive flooding by any means, we were under the cloud cover and received rain from it. But I wouldn’t say we were part of the storm or the impact area.
DY: So just to avoid a cliffhanger effect, are the people that you care about and are in touch with in North Carolina okay right now? Are you in contact with everybody? I know you said earlier this week that you were still trying to get a hold of some friends.
CPS: So we were on the phone with my parents as the rain was coming down and they had experienced about three days of rain beforehand. And so they knew that it was going to get really bad. As things got really bad in the middle of the day on Saturday, we lost service. The last conversation that we had with my parents, they were going up to their uphill neighbor’s house to go and help them figure out if they needed to evacuate because my dad is an erosion expert and a slope expert. So it just happened to be that he was there looking at the damage. But the last we heard from them was, “The neighbor feels the earth moving beneath their feet. We’re going up to tell them if they should evacuate.” By that point, we saw the alerts coming in that every single road and bridge in Haywood County should be considered closed and impassable. So we let my parents know in that final conversation that if they made the decision that the neighbors were going to evacuate, that they would have to take care of them nearby.
Tree damage in Canton, North Carolina in the days after Hurricane Helene. (Photo provided)
So my mom yelled that to my dad through this wind that I’m hearing, and he’s like, “We’re too late to evacuate.” And click, the phone goes out. And we have no idea whether they’re safe or not for the next full day. They were stuck on the mountain for three days and finally got off with the help of some really kind neighbors who were helping clear debris.
At the beginning of all this, I had three friends who were unaccounted for. My parents went and physically found those friends and their parents and made sure that they were okay. Although one of my friends, her parents who live next to her lost their home. So they were pulling things out of their house as the water was rising. And so everyone is safe but there’s been a lot of destruction, a lot of property damage, and a lot of financial loss. One of my friends is a farmer and received a ton of property damage. It was almost impossible to get in touch with these folks until five days later.
DY: My grandma lives near Spruce Pine and I got a text message from her on Saturday morning that said “I’m connected to a generator for a couple of minutes and I’m safe and sound, but you’re probably not going to hear from me for a while.” And then it was true. I didn’t hear from her again until Monday evening. But yeah, the power outages and the cell service outages have just added so much stress to a painful situation.
Did your parents have power during that time that you weren’t hearing from them?
CPS: No, they didn’t have power for five days. They were completely, totally isolated. My mom was actually a Boy Scout troop leader and she had everything prepared. She knew that the storm was coming. I think that was a smart and very forward thinking thing that they did, but there were only a few meteorologists who I felt really hammered home the threat of this in the beginning. And I think that a lot of folks made decisions to stay in their homes because the expectations were that it wasn’t going to get over that 19.6 feet that we had seen in the Pigeon River in 2021.
More destruction in Canton. (Photo provided)
I don’t think that there’s culpability there, I just think that that’s something we should consider when or if there’s another storm of this magnitude. I think that if it comes again that we need to really take it seriously and make sure that people know they need to leave their homes.
DY: So what are your parents describing now in your town? What’s the situation on the ground look like at the moment?
CPS: When I asked them what they would like people to know and what they would like me to say in this interview, they said that they’re over a week out and they still don’t have the reliable cellular service that they need. They weren’t able to have a connection for longer than a few minutes at their house until today. So that is the biggest thing and they said it goes hand in hand with misinformation that is currently rampant. They wanted to convey to people that misinformation hurts everyone on the ground.
DY: We don’t have to get too specific about the misinformation, but what kind of claims should people be wary of on social media?
CPS: Things to be wary of – we are hearing that the federal government and FEMA are preventing people from getting help and that they’re not present on the ground. We’re seeing political leaders, law enforcement leaders from all over the aisle, like Sheriff Bill Wilke of Haywood County denouncing this stuff. What we really need is people believing in the goodness of those around them and not in the badness of what can be in politics. And so if you hear stories of people who aren’t helping or who are preventing help, we should be questioning that.
DY: On that note, what do recovery efforts look like right now?
CPS: The leader on this, I think, is Mayor Zeb Smathers out of Canton. He’s got this vision of what Western North Carolina can be. And I think that his leadership is really outstanding. One of the things that I want to repeat and add on to is he said that rebuilding and staying in Western North Carolina is an act of patriotism. And I believe that too. But I think that rebuilding with our eyes on resilience is an act of love for our region and an act of patriotism for our country. I think that making sure that the businesses that were harmed in this are not exploited by outside corporations who are looking to make a quick buck off of disasters like the Gatlinburg fires in 2016. We want to protect our communities. And so I think that rebuilding while prioritizing the folks who’ve been impacted is the most important thing.
Another thing that’s helpful is donating hyper-locally. There are tons of great organizations but I will just give one here for Haywood County since that’s the place I know best. United Way of Haywood County is the central hub for getting money into the hands of folks, getting food into the hands of folks, and then rebuilding efforts long after we move out of emergency mode. That’s a wonderful place to donate.
DY: Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?
CPS: I wanted to mention here that I think that it’s important that we highlight and understand that this disaster is a network of system failures, in addition to a once in a thousand year storm. There was human suffering on the ground that could have been prevented had we had access to tools that other disaster areas have access to, such as a simple phone call. So I think that understanding that it was more than just a natural disaster, that there were patterns of behavior before that contributed. We need only look at Haywood County in 2021. That was a once in a hundred year storm, three years later, here we have a once in a thousand year storm. So, you know, that’s more than a coincidence.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox. Join my email list By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time. Processing… Success! You're on the list. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
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