ASHEVILLE - In no-frills neighborhood bar, The Odd, they were in the dark, slinging food hot off of gas grills. A line meandered out the door and past the wooden fence that demarcates the patio of the West Asheville hangout. It was pay-what-you-can, or nothing at all, once you reached the front of the queue.
"A lot of people are hurting," said Ben Hester, among those cooking in the close, warm kitchen of the bar on Sept. 29. He introduced himself as "Big Daddy Chef."
"We're just trying to make sure that everybody eats, nobody goes hungry."
They had freezers full of food, co-owner Amy Marshall reasoned. It's going bad: "Let's cook it all."
It was two days after Tropical Storm Helene and the lights were still out. The power company, Duke Energy, cautioned it might be until the end of the week for some areas to be restored. For water, the outlook was even more grim. Officials said restoring service to the full system could take weeks.
'Grassroots organizing' fills gaps
But in neighborhoods like West Asheville, in the days before federal aid would reach the promised Buncombe County distribution sites, communities were organizing.
Marshall said it's not uncommon to see people walking up her West Asheville street carrying sloshing 5-gallon buckets, having come to scoop water from her pool, desperate for a way to flush toilets.
Behind the counter of The Odd's darkened kitchen, Mercy Beveridge was slicing bread, doling spoonfuls of eggs and cheese into Styrofoam clamshells. The day before, Marshall said they served over 500 people. Then, it was standard bar fare, clearing out the stock item by item: fries, burgers, philly cheese steaks. She brought bags of mozzarella sticks to people waiting in line.
"It's what The Odd represents," Marshall said.
Even if you don't need food, you came to be with people.
“I think it’s notable that (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is not here yet, and there is sort of a resilience and a nimbleness to people helping each other out," said Libertie Valance Sept. 29. Valance was standing across the street outside Firestorm, West Asheville's collectively-owned, radical bookstore, where they are among the collective members and worker/owners at the 15-year-old cooperative.
"Even if we do live in a world right now where we are reliant on the big nonprofits and government agencies to carry a lot of weight, we know that volunteer, grassroots organizing is what can fill the gap and save lives in the interim.”
At the bookstore, Valance pointed to the "giant ecosystem" of resource sharing: Food moving from Sunny Point Cafe? to 12 Baskets, then the leftovers to a table outside Firestorm, where beef tacos were up for grabs. Sanitary supplies like diapers and tampons were stacked nearby, delivered by people from South Carolina, part of a mutual aid disaster relief network, Valance said.
“It’s just been like a series of things being worse than I, or the people around me, thought they were going to be. And so each day has felt like an unwelcome novelty," they said.
“I think the silver lining on that is just from literally the first second, and really before it even started, there were people that we knew and we were seeing organize themselves."
It was more than resources — households, friends and neighbors were creating new rituals, new means of communication with cell service still limited, or nonexistent. For some, it was elaborate note systems. For others, a whiteboard in a shared hallway.
“I definitely get a sense of people offering what they have and speaking up when they need things,” said Ben Stockdale, who had found his way to a West Asheville fire station in search of cell service.
Some neighborhoods set times to meet each evening or morning, or gathered to listen to the latest emergency briefings, broadcast from a car radio, windows rolled down and doors open. Firestorm has been holding community meetings each day at 2 p.m.
'It's all gone'
In Montford, taped to a fence in Chestnut Street, news updates and tips were posted daily. A charging station was set up, extension cord running back into the house.
It was there that Madeline Varney paused on her bike to peruse the postings. She had a milk crate of groceries attached to the back.
In those first days, Valance had pointed out earlier, people found the best way to learn about stocked grocery stores or working gas pumps was word of mouth. You pass someone with groceries? Ask them where they got it.
In this case, Varney said, it was at the Whole Foods off Merrimon Avenue. It was a two hour line, but she snagged juice and La Croix, having been spurned by a picked-over water section, and hygienic supplies for older neighbors in her building, who she said, like others, are "banding together."
But while Varney said she was getting by in North Asheville, less hard-hit than other areas of the city — though her house was grazed by two huge maple trees that fell during the storm — it was her family she was more worried for.
"My folks are in Spruce Pine," she said. "It's decimated."
While she agreed she's also seeing the community gathering, "I’m just worried about two weeks from now, when people don’t have water and gas, and you can’t really get out," Varney said.
"That’s what makes me claustrophobic. And I can’t go anywhere towards my family. It’s all gone.”
'Support between neighbors'
For Amy Cantrell and Ponkho Bermejo, the search for resources had meant driving backroads south to Easley, South Carolina, where Bermejo said they spent thousands of dollars filling cars with food, drinks and needed supplies.
The night of Sept. 29, they were making their way back north, with stops to deliver aid planned in Hendersonville, Sweeten Creek and Candler, finishing up overnight in Swannanoa, where Fire Chief Anthony Penland described the damage as "total devastation."
More:Helene in Swannanoa: 'Devastation' brings 'nightmares' for residents
"We're safe," Cantrell told the Citizen Times over a staticky phone connection. But of what they've seen on the ground, "you can't even put words to it. It's so horrific."
"We have seen a lot of pain," Bermejo said. But they have also "seen a lot of support between neighbors. We hear a lot of stories of people who don’t have a lot, only they offer something to their neighbor," because they know the only way to survive this situation is to help the people who live beside you, he said.
More:More than 12,000 requests for help: Volunteers search for missing people after Helene
More:'A warzone:' Asheville Mayor talks Helene; Water restoration could be weeks away
Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email [email protected] or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
Please support us by turning off your adblocker.
Get unlimited digital access, along with subscriber-exclusive content, and more.
Powered By