#buncombe

[unteriors]

State Route 37 Highway N, Buncombe, Illinois.

[eopederson2]

Entrance, Grove Shopping Center, Asheville, North Carolina, 2017.

Not in the section of Asheville hit by recent flooding, but the entire urban area has been afflicted as the water system was damaged. Heard today that the city water is finally safe to drink after several weeks of a "boil water" alert.

[slayfk]

luckily, boone isn’t gone, just widely damaged. certain parts of the main town, like bavarian village, college place, and that whole walmart supercenter area, are absolutely ravaged. it will recover because boone is the host to appalachian state’s parasite and appalachian state can’t let it die out completely. it can let it hurt, it can let it really hurt, but it’ll continue to stuff it full of students and build bullshit all over it.

i shouldn’t have said chimney rock was gone—in saying that i acted dismissively toward its surviving residents, and i apologize. the survivors of chimney rock mean that chimney rock is still there, even if the town itself has been ravaged. same with marshall, north carolina, which is in a similar state.

i believe a starlink system is being set up at enkacandler fire station 10 in buncombe county, and that the asheville public library has wifi. my friends’ families in cashiers, jackson county had to drive down to south carolina to get service, but they said cashiers is alright.

i hope you and your family are okay or end up okay, tumblr user the-thing-of-worms

stay safe out there everyone, please let me know if you hear of any other towns that have faced destruction similar to chimney rock and marshall. i’d like to compile a list of the communities that have been the most affected. and, if you hear from any small town that’s been hard to access or hear from, please let me know. ill compile a list of town statuses.

posting here because this just doesn’t feel right to talk about in the horseimagebarn voice but this is extremely important to talk about.

my partner and i have returned to our hometown to stay with her family and my own has gotten a hotel here too (they moved to the town we currently live in after we did) so we are all safe and out of the thick of it

however there are tens of thousands of people who are not both in my own town and in the many surrounding it. appalachia will take an extremely long time to recover from this and there are more storms on the way. all i see on social media right now is people asking for shelter because their homes have been destroyed, or people asking for help searching for family members who are missing. hundreds of trees have fallen. hundreds of homes have flooded. roads are literally falling apart. preexisting sinkholes due to shitty pipes are opening up and consuming land. dams are on the verge of bursting and the only way to stop it is to release water so quickly it floods whole towns. all but one of our cell towers are down, so only people with at&t have service and the rest can’t contact anyone. over half the town still doesn’t have power. a major water supply issue occurred and the entire town is on a water boil order with no electricity to boil with. people are trapped in their homes and workplaces or out on the street because they have nowhere to go. law enforcement is blocking off roads but trapping people in the process. people have to be rescued by helicopter. our animal shelter has no water or power and boarding facilities have been flooded. entire villages like chimney rock nc are gone, and entire cities like asheville are cut off from the rest of the state and are completely inaccessible. ALL OF THE ROADS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ARE CLOSED. 400+ roads are closed because they are unsafe . that is INSANE!!!

when people say that climate change isn’t real, they don’t know what they’re talking about. climate change and its father capitalism are only going to continue to worsen lives in every way possible. i live in the mountains and our infrastructure is completely unprepared to handle hurricanes and it’s only going to get worse. it’s such a strange and eye-opening experience to live something like this when you think that it could never happen to you because that type of weather shouldn’t reach you in your environment. climate change doesn’t care where you live. it’s real.

western north carolina and the rest of the southeast that has been hit by helene need help. more people need to be talking about this so that the government DOES SOMETHING because the government historically fucking hates appalachia and it still does!!! the major state institution near me took DAYS to respond despite being the only place in town with power and wifi connection because they had to wait for the state to approve their response—they could have allowed thousands of people to evacuate days prior to the hurricane hitting us but they didn’t do anything before or after until it was too late!!! it’s bullshit!!! PLEASE get talking about this because something has to be done. climate change is going to continue happening and our mountains and the people in them are going to suffer immensely. hundreds if not thousands are now homeless. please talk about this look at the footage online of the wreckage and look how quickly our infrastructure crumbled. we need better. the people of appalachia deserve better.

i’ll get back to posting horses soon. but for now this is a lot. my friends are homeless and my family had to get off the mountain or be trapped there without power and water for days. we’re all safe but exhausted. i hope everyone who has been affected by this is staying safe. if you are in western nc, dm me. when i come back, if you’re in my area, im happy to bring supplies. stay safe everyone

[paulobenedeti-blog]

Just SOLD‼️ BUY- SELL - INVEST 🏡 Better Call Paulo ☎️ 828-559-9562 ☎️ Got Yours❓Congratulations To All Involved 🥳 #findingyourhome #movenc #coldwellbanker #anywhereanytime #relocationservices #referralsusa #morganton #lenoir #glenalpine #buyersagent #stoprenting #bettercallpaulo #gotland #firsttimebuyer #financialassistance #burke #mcdowell #caldwell #buncombe #listwithpaulo #sellersagent #schoolofmathandscience #northcarolina #listing #homeforsale #coldwellbanker #housetours #livingthedreamlife #livingthelife #broker Refer Us In NC ~ FL And Beyond 🇺🇸 Get Paid For Just Making A Phone Call 💵 www.MoveNC.us 828-559-9562 paulo@coldwellbanker.com (at Paulo Benedeti Coldwell Banker) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClmWwgJJ3WW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[oldnorthcarolina]

Beaverdam Creek, Asheville, NC

[visionsthatdance]

Support for Western North Carolina

This is the text body of an email from Carolina Jews for Justice, a grassroots organizing group based in Durham, NC. I thought I would share it here.

Monetary Donations = Direct Aid

Please consider making donations to the following mutual aid and support efforts or on-ground organizations, and please share widely:

Day One Relief is mobilizing and a trusted source sending direct aid via plane to hard hit spaces. 

*Monetary and Direct Item Give*

 Donate to Day One Relief

Operation Airdrop

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Triangle Mutual Aid (coordinating with Asheville Mutual Aid)

BeLoved Asheville - needs funds and is coordinating volunteers with trucks who can drive supplies to people, out of 32 Old Charlotte Hwy Asheville, NC

Organizing Resilience (benefits Down Home NC, and other rural organizers doing the deep, year-round work, and partaking in community assessment surveys right now)

Items Needed

Water

Life Straws

Chainsaws

Heavy-duty storage totes

Heavy-duty tarps (the blue ones are less good)

Generators

Roofing nails

Baby formula

Non-perishable food

Manual can openers

Coolers

Gatorade

Wire brushes

Trash bags (the heavy ones are sometimes called "contractor bags")

Brooms

Mops

Laundry detergent

Washboards

Batteries, power banks

Mosquito spray

Toilet paper

Dehumidifiers

Box fans

Solar charging items

Diapers, baby wipes

5 gal buckets

Respirators and N-95 cartridges

2x4s

Bleach

Drop-Off Locations

Triangle Area

+ Carrboro, NC: 

Back Alley Bikes

100 Boyd St, Carrboro, NC 27510

Open Tues - Sat. 11am to 6pm

+ Durham, NC:

The Scrap Exchange

2050 Chapel Hill Rd, Durham, NC 27707

10:30am - 6pm Tue-Sun.

Art Post 

718 Iredell, Durham NC 27705

Starting Monday, Sept. 30th

Open Monday-Saturday 12-6pm

Maverick’s Smokehouse and Taproom

900 W Main Street, Durham NC 27701

*on street parking and free parking available in Brightleaf Square Lot*

Sunday 11am-9pm

Monday-Tuesday 11am-2pm

Wednesday-Thursday 11am-9pm

Friday-Saturday 11am-11pm

+ Raleigh, NC: 

RUMAH 

415 Hillsborough St., Raleigh

Drop off during events. See calendar on website raleighmutualaid.info

Triad Area

Taking donations over the next few weeks. Accepted Items include: sports drinks, hydration packs, baby wipes, diapers, baby formula, bug spray, sunscreen, plastic utensils, manual can openers, large trash bags, non-perishable foods, cleaning supplies, plastic sheeting/tarps, toothbrushes and toothpaste, toiletries/sanitation items, pet food, hand sanitizer, sanitizer wipes, feminine hygiene products, heavy-duty work gloves and unworn socks. 

+ Greensboro, NC: 

GetOutdoors Pedal & Paddle

1515 W Gate City Blvd., Greensboro NC

AND: 

241 Summit Avenue

11am - 1pm Tuesday-Friday

+ Lewisville, NC: 

The Coffee Mill 

6275 Shallowford Road, Lewisville, NC

Charlotte Area:

+ Concord, NC:

Drop offs for Operation Airdrop at Walmart Parking Lot

5825 Thunder Rd NW, Concord, NC 28027

[etraytin]

Just a note to let all the moots and buddies know that my family and I are safe and well after several days completely incommunicado after Helene. I admit to a certain amount of personal arrogance before the storm; I spent all of Thursday working a Red Cross shelter in Swannanoa (Western North Carolina was flooding even before Helene made landfall) and went home to sleep, confident that I would be largely unaffected there and come back to help the actual damaged areas after the storm. I didn’t even fill our goddamned bathtubs, what the hell, past me?

In any case, the storm hit us like the fist of an angry god, and while I was incredibly lucky that my home was spared, the winds caused a huge amount of damage to the power grid, which in turn wiped out water (all wells in my area!) and communications. We were still better off than other more low-lying places, where they got the wind and the water both, to devastating effect. I picked my way carefully back to Swannanoa on Saturday because my entire Red Cross chain of command was a black hole of no comms and this was the last place I’d seen them, but the shelter had been closed and moved because the damage was too extensive. I had to drive around a huge car shed that had been set down in the middle of the highway and past a sinkhole bigger than my van just to get to the place, so it was understandable. The weird thing is, Swannanoa had cell signal so I sat in the parking lot of a closed and washed-out gas station for about an hour just to call our loved ones and try and figure out what had happened to us.

Living in a communications blackout is very interesting and strange. You’d think it would be like rocketing back into the past, but it is not. People had ways of communicating before the internet that have not survived the internet. Radio stations are so rarely local now, and how many of them are actually good at relaying emergency information anymore? The most infuriating of our local stations would offer bumpers promising news and wither, then directing people to their website which we of course could not access. Nobody has landlines anymore to talk on the phone. Even people with “landlines” have digital phones through their cable service, not real telephone lines. Ham radio operators are rarer than hen’s teeth. When I got back from Swannanoa, I walked up and down the very steep hill that is my street, visiting my neighbors and telling them that I had gone to visit the internet and come back with news!

My trip did provide us with an action plan and a route out of town, at least. Only one major road out of Buncombe County was open, and it was the one furthest from us, but we hoped we could do it. Both cars had a third of a tank of gas left, so we picked the one that got better mileage, packed up and crossed our fingers. The evening before we left, we invited all the neighbors over and grilled all the meat in our freezer, now thawed and on the edge of ruin. They brought stuff too and we had chicken, burgers, brats, hot dogs, salmon and shrimp. It was really nice and didn’t break up until dusk when we all had to go home by flashlight. In the morning, we left as soon as it was light, hoping to avoid traffic, and with no maps and a vague idea of where we were going, headed for Charlotte and the modern world. It took us about four hours to go what would have been ninety miles on the normal route, including time waiting in a very long line for gas, but we got to my sister’s house where we got showers and cold drinks and basically just fell into bed.

So that’s how it stands now. We are safe, we are out, we are going back soon even if the power doesn’t come back. The Red Cross still needs me and our house is going to get very yucky all closed up to mildew in the post-storm humidity. We are taking this time to rest up and stock up on supplies and batteries, then it’s back into the void. Please send good wishes our way, and maybe donate to the Red Cross or other orgs working out here because it’s a huge, huge job.

[miraeon]

Reposting important words from friends at Firestorm Co-op in Asheville.

[hip-to-my-jive]

My current foster kittens are so freaking cute y'all

[fragmentofpossibilitybeacon]

Checking in from WNC;

Cell signal is still very spotty. Most places are still without power and water, and getting supplies into the region is a slow going proposition.

Y’all, the folks in the area need help. Please.

[bloodmoonlich]

.

[eopederson]

The Block Off Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina, 2017.

An experiment, only partially successful, in controlling colors.

[todieforimages]

St. John “A” Baptist Church and South Asheville Cemetery

Located in South Asheville, the St. John “A” Baptist Church and the South Asheville Cemetery were originally part of a Black community that was absorbed into Kenilworth. The cemetery and church were not annexed into Kenilworth. Built in 1929, this brick Gothic Revival church is the third church for the congregation. It is located next to the South Asheville Cemetery, which began as a cemetery…

[trendynewsnow]

Revised Death Toll from Hurricane Helene in Buncombe County

The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office in western North Carolina officially announced on Tuesday a significant revision to the death toll attributed to Hurricane Helene. Initially reported as 72 fatalities, the confirmed number has been adjusted to 42, reflecting an overcount of 30 deaths. This adjustment comes in the wake of the catastrophic flooding and mudslides that the storm inflicted upon the…

[oldnorthcarolina]

Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina

[etraytin]

Postcards From the Dusty Mountains

Took the kiddo out yesterday with me when I went a-volunteering because he is getting very tired of not having anything to do. You know it's getting bad when a guy misses school and is tired of being on his computer all day. I'm not being sarcastic either, I'm deeply sympathetic to his plight and I wish he could get back to school and the friends he was making and the brand-new boyfriend he's been taking those first cautious romantic steps with. He already had to live through COVID homeschooling for two years, and now this. Ugh. I have heard rumors that they are hoping to open the schools back up on October 21, which means two more weeks closed, but it could be worse. So many places still don't even have power, much less water.

Anyway, I took him with me and we went down to a food distribution in Swannanoa. They got hit very very hard, and we spent a couple hours helping a Chick-Fil-A volunteer team from Atlanta hand out hot chicken sandwiches and bottled water. In normal days I don't have much to do with Chick-Fil-A because I don't like their politics, but when the matter at hand is giving hot food to people who've lost their homes, you put the politics aside. I just wish the rest of the country was able to do the same, because I am extraordinarily tired of people thinking of North Carolina as a "battleground state" when the battle we are fighting right now is to keep people alive as the weather starts to turn cold and the water lines stay broken.

Today was busy because I actually managed to keep a doctor's appointment I have been waiting a month for, which was quite a pleasant surprise! The doctor's office is in Hendersonville, so the fact that they were open for business and that I was able to get there are both things that I might have doubted a week ago. I also had an appointment with a local HVAC outfit about getting a whole-house standby generator installed so that next time we have a power outage, we can at least power the fridges, the well pump, the dehumidifiers and my CPAP, with maybe some left over for laptop charging. The price he quoted me for everything except the propane tank and line was $11,000, which was not exactly unexpected but still a big ol' yikes. The good news is, his company bought several of the right size generators before the storm so they would have an inventory, so I could theoretically have a generator before winter really sets in. Highly tempting.

In the afternoon, kiddo and I went out to do more helping. If nothing else has become more apparent over this week, it's that we were and continue to be so, so lucky. Of all the teachers at my husband's school, we are the _only_ family who are still in our own home with all our utilities back up. We are the only members of our extended family in the area who have power. We are part of a tiny fraction of households in the region who have potable water coming from our taps. Given all of that, we decided that we were going to take my final paycheck from canvassing and put it into a community that was not lucky at all. Our Lowes got restocked big time this week, so I was able to go in and get a propane tank, a gas can, a huge box of contractor bags, a straight rake, a shovel, and a gas-powered chainsaw with two cans of fuel for it. We also raided our own house and took our own three shovels and straight rake, our garden cart, some very cute hiking boots I bought but hadn't worn yet, eight packs of bath wipes and two of our cell phone power banks and drove the whole thing down to Black Mountain.

Black Mountain is very close to Swannanoa and was also hit extremely hard by the storm. We didn't go around touristing, but even on the main roads we took we could see devastation everywhere. Everywhere the water touched was drenched in toxic mud, which has dried over the past two weeks into an awful choking dust that covers everything. It blows on the wind and rises with every passing car. As we drove I took the opportunity to explain how the search and rescue paint marking system works to Kiddo, because their bright green graffiti was on all the half-destroyed houses we were passing.

There's an outdoor music venue in Black Mountain called Silverados that has been turned into a massive distribution center. Hot meals were being passed out in the front, while the rear was a busy hive of organizing and distributing supplies. We went there and dropped off all our items, where they were carted away into an absolutely teeming hub of supplies and volunteers. We asked if they needed any more help today, but they definitely had enough willing hands. I think my dad will laugh because I finally did get the chainsaw he talked me out of, but then gave it away before it even left the box.

With a little time on our hands, we went back up north and visited our favorite grocery store, the one that sells lightly-expired canned and boxed food at greatly reduced prices. We were very happy to see that they'd come through the storm unscathed except for a lack of internet, and stocked up on more of the seemingly endless supply of Old El Paso meal kits that they sell two for a dollar. Cheaper than buying tortillas and taco seasoning, lol! We also visited the local record store, which opened for regular business hours despite the circumstances as well, and bought a couple of records because we want them to stay in business even though times are tough. It was, overall, an extremely successful outing.

Sometimes the world here in our house feels tantalizingly close to normal, an endless weekend where we are just waiting to go back to school and work. But just driving into town and seeing all the places closed for lack of water is enough to destroy that bubble, and driving thirty minutes in any direction is like stepping into a different world. Marshall, Spruce Pine, Swannanoa, Black Mountain, the River Arts District. Dozens more places that I have not seen and probably couldn't even get to if I tried. I'm very afraid for what is about to happen in Florida, for their sake and for ours. Appalachia has a long history of being forgotten about when bad things are happening. I really hope it doesn't go that way again.