Out by Barnardsville Highway, the old volunteer fire department hums and buzzes with activity. People are stacking wood, serving food, sending medics to check on residents, and generally trying to meet the hard-hit unincorporated community’s needs as best they can.
In Barnardsville, Helene forged a stronger bond between the town’s newer residents and those whose families have been here for generations, said Madison Moore, a volunteer. Moore spoke as she sat in a patch of sun next to the fire station.
Tucked away in a rural corner of Buncombe County, residents mostly fend for themselves – with creativity born of urgency and necessity. Because she had wilderness experience and orienteering skills, Moore helped coordinate in the initial days after the flood, what she calls “comb-overs" – methodical wellness checks, one-by-one, in the places where there are homes.
Dory Farlessyost, a tour guide for ziplining company Navitat, is – like many other outdoor workers – out of work. She has put the company’s side-by-side UTVs to work to check on neighbors who were trapped or have limited mobility.
“A big thing is showing up saying, ‘What prescriptions do you need,’” she said. She’s been connecting a lot of COPD and asthma sufferers with inhalers and oxygen tanks, as well as fetching seizure and other essential medications.
Moore was on her way to visit Bobby, the mutual aid hub’s neighbor who lives in a brick house next to the highway.
“He grew up here, and we've been tending to him and checking in on him, and just because he is emotionally vulnerable right now. His niece and his niece's daughter – they were killed in the flood.”
Bobby came out to greet Moore a little later on the porch, before eating some toast and coffee in his kitchen. At 90, he’s still running up and down the roads around town, and he made it clear the volunteers were welcome.
Moore and many of the other mutual aid hub volunteers are relatively young, often queer or trans artists who came to the area for annual earth skills retreats like the Firefly Gathering. They live scattered around the Barnardsville area; some have roots there, some don’t. When they began looking for a place to store supplies after the storm, a community member offered to let them post up in the old fire department. Now that they’re Bobby’s neighbors, they maintain a neighborly relationship.
“It don't bother me,” he said. “They got a tent behind the building there. They didn't have nowhere to put it. I said, ‘Put you in one back here.’ I don't care. And he was carrying all that gas and stuff in five gallons. I said, take my truck and haul that stuff back there. I ain't using it.” He sat on his porch swing and turned his face toward the sun. “God says you're supposed to help everybody, honey.”
The structure of the Barnardsville community support system post-Helen isn’t really official. But because Barnardsville is unincorporated, Moore said half-jokingly, it’s the closest thing the town has to a government right now. They've built relationships with the other community center in the area, Big Ivy, which recently reopened. They even took it upon themselves to invite FEMA to the town. Agents showed up last Friday and Saturday, though they had to leave midway through the day after some threats to FEMA agents around Lake Lure put the agency on alert. Agents returned later in the week for a couple of days.
Another resident, Marcia Kummerle, 85, a fiber artist and goat breeder, said the help of neighbors, in particular, has gotten her through the worst of post-storm living. She still has a lot to deal with – a bundle of trees uprooted by the flood rammed into her house and are now holding her porch up, haphazardly. Her goats are gone, and so is her yarn, but her neighbors’ help has made her certain she wants to stay.
“This is, more than any other storm I've been through, has been an example of heartrending kindness and blood, sweat and tears restoration,” Kummerle said.
“I told her we were gonna, if they did make us take down her home, we were gonna build her back a home fit for a queen. And she's like, ‘Oh, I am that queen,’” Moore said. “I have so many old lady tea dates where, like, some of the old ladies are like, ‘Come drink tea with me, honey.’ And the other ones are like, ‘You got to come bring me a bottle of Jager and we'll drink some Jager together.’”
Moore is looking ahead now, as circumstances on the ground shift.
“It is tragic. The s—t ... the stuff, excuse me, that has been happening. But the powerful connections that are forming here,” she said. “We have to create centers where we are ready to dispatch and we know who is out there that needs help. We know who's on oxygen or dialysis in their homes that we need to get a generator to. So, we are building those systems and thinking about the future right now.”
