Living Through A Natural Disaster
My experience in Asheville with Hurricane Helene, and finding a way through the aftermath.
As I write this, a helicopter is passing over my house for what feels like the thousandth time since Saturday. Something that used to be very rare is now kind of normal.
Meanwhile, things that have been the most normal part of my fall weekends, watching the Browns, making food, staying up late, have been totally absent from my life recently.
I live in Western North Carolina, and, if you've seen the news, I'm at the epicenter of one of this century’s worst natural disasters (as Homer Simpson reminds us, “one of the worst natural disasters of this century so far.”)
Nothing much about life here has been normal since Friday morning, or really even since the biblical rains started last Wednesday.
I should clarify that I am absolutely one of the lucky ones. I live in a house on a hill, we set water aside before the storm, and we have food in the pantry. It was a challenge when phone service went down and it's hell not being able to let people that love you know that you're okay. But we have been making do, and feeling mostly okay with our change in circumstances, trying to go with the flow.
On Friday night, without cell service and desperate to know what just happened to us, we turned on the car radio and flipped around the dial. Every Asheville station was dead air or static. Things felt truly apocalyptic in that moment, like something out of a movie.
When I got to the AM dial, I stopped out of habit on 1100. Any Ohioan knows that if you're alive and east of the Mississippi, you've got a good chance of hearing Tom Hamilton on any summer night you wish. His voice was barely audible yet instantly recognizable, a sign from 500-plus miles away that life was normal somewhere, even if it wasn't normal here.
We plugged on through the weekend, assessing our situation and spending a very long Saturday without any ability to communicate outside our house. Travel was discouraged, gas was low anyway, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that good news would find us soon.
One thing that happened should have been easy to see coming. Despite all the bad news, when Sunday afternoon rolled around, I started to want to turn on the TV and watch the Browns. It's the last Sunday in September. Of course the Browns are on.
So what they're 1-2, so what they're playing the lousy Raiders? Who cares that this year's team seems to have the exact inverse amount of charisma as last year's lovable bunch?
Just like stopping in on WTAM, you know to tune in to the Browns on Sundays in the fall to connect with your people. Maybe sometimes we wish we could root for another team but we know at a molecular level we are in this for the long run, no matter what comes along.
Check in with Hammy, keep an eye on the Cavs score, put the Browns game on. We're Cleveland sports fans and nothing is going to change that. We'll still be here.
For most of this weekend, of course, it was never a thought whether the Browns game would be on. In fact, when I woke up Sunday morning, my most urgent thought was establishing contact with my 70-year old father, who lives in a rural area down here that is frequently cut off by floods.
No one had heard from him since before the storm and it seemed like it would be impossible to get out to his place. The road was closed, according to the Internet. Imagine my surprise when he arrived at my door, mud-stained car and all, having driven out once the way was clear.
My dad's dad was a Browns fan from the first year they had a team. He had just left the Navy and was starting a family in north-central Ohio in those post-war boom years. He saw them win their last World Championship in 1964 before passing away too young a few years later.
My dad picked up a love of the team from his father at an early age and he passed it on to me. I'm sure many of you can relate to the notion that talking about the Browns was often the easiest way to communicate with each other, and at times that was the case for us.
My dad and I caught up and shared our stories from the storm and its aftermath. We ate dinner together on the front porch, where the light was brightest.
At one point, after we had eaten, I checked my phone out of habit and noticed that I had a reliable data signal for the first time in over two days. More out of curiosity than anything else, I dialed up the Browns radio broadcast and we all laughed out loud when it actually worked.
The background noise for us was the same as it had been all weekend: the hum of generators, the roar of chainsaws, and the beating of helicopter rotors. But it was a genuine thrill to hear Nathan Zegura’s voice suddenly and improbably coming out of my phone.
You all know how the game ended. After one of the Browns failed fourth quarter drives, my dad, frustrated, looked at me and said “They're going to lose to the Raiders, I can't believe it. Just turn it off, it's not worth it.”
I blurted out; “But this is what we do.”
No matter where we are in life, no matter the geography or circumstance that separates us, no matter how good or bad the Browns are as a football team. If it's a Sunday in the fall, we put the Browns game on.
It's what we do.
If you are able, please consider donating to Hurricane Helene relief efforts by visiting this link.
Glad all's well. Always enjoy your 'everyman take' on things!
Thanks for this, Andrew. I’m also an Ohio transplant in western NC and have been here most of my life and it’s been really difficult seeing so much damage and destruction at home. I was lucky to get my power back on Sunday afternoon— my brother who lives in the next town over still doesn’t have his as I write. But we had him and his girlfriend stay Sunday night and watched the game together, which we don’t usually do even though he’s only 20 minutes away. And it was nice to connect with him that way, like when we were kids still at home with our parents. The hurricane was absolutely devastating but if there’s a silver lining it’s that these situations bring us together and reminds us of how important those connections are. Glad to hear you’re safe and sound!