OLD FORT, N.C.—A month has passed since Hurricane Helene swept through western North Carolina, reducing homes to piles of rubble, washing away roads, and changing the landscape of communities and mountainsides.
In Old Fort, a village of 800 located 30 miles east of Asheville that was heavily impacted by flooding and mudslides, the family that owns Davis Country Store and Café has shifted its focus from offering hot meals and supplies to providing short-term housing for displaced locals who are sleeping in their cars and tents.
“Winter is coming, and it’s already cold at night. Many people don’t have the means to rent a hotel room, and many people need a temporary fix while they clean up their homes or find a way to rebuild their homes,” Amy Davis told The Epoch Times.
“Too many of our townsfolk are sleeping in tents and cars at night. Getting them homes for the winter is our priority.”
General stores are the lifeblood of rural America, especially in the western North Carolina mountains. In Old Fort, Davis Country Store and Café is a one-stop shop for odds and ends, a place to have a meal, and a gathering spot where locals chat.
In the aftermath of Helene, the store became a beacon of hope.
The storm made landfall at the Big Bend of Florida and continued its long path of destruction into western North Carolina, where it arrived on Sept. 27.
In the days before, a stalled weather front over the mountains had brought more than a foot of rain, swelling creeks, streams, and rivers.
When Helene arrived, there was nowhere left for the excessive water to go but through people’s homes.
Raging water ripped houses from their foundations and carried them down mountains, pushed cars and semi-trucks up into treetops, and twisted train tracks. Swaths of debris collected around bridges, and some of those bridges snapped.
Many villages and hamlets high in the mountains, including Old Fort, were mostly or fully destroyed.
“In just a few hours, half of our town’s residents became homeless, and everyone lost power, water, connectivity through phone and internet. Not to mention downed trees and landslides cut everyone off from traveling to check on one another or get to resources,” Davis said.
Her husband Robert’s family has ties to Old Fort that date back to the 1790s. The Davises and their two sons—Anderson and Henry—live on a farm in an area called Davistown, where Robert’s family once operated the general store for decades.
During the hurricane, the Davis family hunkered down inside their home. Afterward, the family and their neighbors “got on [their] tractors and started clearing the roads, cutting downed trees with chainsaws,” Davis said.
“The other way, people were doing the same thing,” she said. “Everyone was out clearing the roads, and that helped locals and emergency personnel get through to the village.”
Once the Davis family made their way back to downtown Old Fort, they were relieved to find the country store and café buildings were spared from damage, and they embarked on a mission to feed residents and first responders.
“We started with just biscuits, but the community began bringing us what they had in their freezers and fridges, we were able to make lunch, and then dinner,” Davis said.
“By Tuesday, the store and café was filled with ice chests full of meats, dairy products, produce, and frozen meals,.”
For the first few weeks after Helene passed through, Davis estimates her café fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner to around 600 people a day.
The store and café partnered with First Baptist Church of Old Fort to gather and distribute supplies. They established the Old Fort Fund, which received donations from across the country.
Along the main street leading into downtown Old Fort, homes were reduced to rubble by the floods. Piles of debris line the road, part of which has been washed away.
A short drive along the rural routes that surround Old Fort lead to crumbled homes, debris wrapped around trees and bridges, and displaced residents sleeping in tents on foundations where their homes once sat.
Davis told The Epoch Times that one reason the family served hot meals three times a day was to provide sustenance. Another reason was to offer at least a sliver of normalcy.
“We wanted them to have good, hot meals, not disaster food. We wanted to make this feel more like home,” she said.
The recovery and rebuilding process in western North Carolina is expected to be long.
Repairing the town’s water and sewer systems is a top priority, local leaders have said.
Daniel Ledford, a contractor from Chonzie Inc., said it could take at least 18 months until the repairs on the sewer and water systems are completed.
It will take crews longer to fix the community’s bridges, roads, and sidewalks, Ledford believes.
The McDowell County government said that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will soon start collecting Hurricane Helene-related residential debris from roadsides.
Davis also serves as president of the Old Fort Business Association. Her objective is to get residents into homes and help businesses reopen.
“I really try to not look at the recovery as one day at a time because it’s important to have a long-term vision. How do we get people into homes so they can stay warm through the winter? And then how do we get businesses to survive?” she said.
“We just lost our biggest tourist month of the year with fall foliage. That is when most of us make a bulk of our money.”
Last year, the Davis family hosted their first annual Boo Bash, a family-friendly Halloween event with candy stops along Main Street in downtown Old Fort, free food and hot cider, and live music.
“In the first few weeks after Helene, people asked if we were still having it. We never thought about canceling it. This community needs hope, and keeping the Boo Bash on as scheduled will give our townsfolk some normalcy at a time when little is normal,” Davis said.
Mary Andrews and her husband, Todd, live outside of Old Fort on a remote mountaintop gravel road dotted by four homes.
They bought the property from a family who had owned it for decades and had built a reservoir to carry spring water to the homes through a system of pipes.
“We woke up at 6:42 in the morning and heard the sound of rushing water, and our creek was rising. We were worried because we were hearing stories of people in their attics and on their roofs trying to survive,” Andrews said.
“We had just bought a whole bunch of food, and we were worried it was going to spoil, so we brought it down here [to the Davis Country Store and Café], just like so many other locals did.
“When I got to the café, I asked Amy what we can do for them. She said, ‘Can you wash dishes?’ So that’s what we did.”
Members of the family who built the reservoir so long ago are helping the Andrews family and their neighbors on the gravel road by repairing the damage so that water to the homes can be restored. That gesture, and the Davis family’s efforts, illustrate the “resilience, spirit, and character of the people of Appalachia,” she said.
“Some people ask if we are going to move. Why would we when we’ve found a place where there is so much beauty in the property where we live, and the people who live here?” Andrews said.
Davis said they are still accepting donations, such as adult coats, propane heaters and cook stoves, livestock feed and pet food, charcoal, and hay.
On a recent weekday afternoon, as she told The Epoch Times about the mission to place residents in relief cottages, a farmer from the area walked through the door.
“Do y'all have dog food or chicken feed?” he asked.
“I’ve got chicken feed right around the corner,“ she said, ”and then what kind of dog food do you need? Are they large dogs or small dogs? How many dogs do you have? Three? OK, let me I‘ll have my boy bring out a couple of bags of dog food. You go around back, and there’s general livestock feed. I’ll have my boy bring out some dog food for you in just a second.”
“Absolutely, bless your heart for that,” the man said.
Shelters established by the county’s emergency services department are closed now that “all sheltered individuals and families have transitioned safely to short-term housing arrangements,” according to a McDowell County press release.
Locals in the surrounding mountainsides who were not in shelters are still struggling day to day, Davis said.
Farmers who have lost their homes do not want to leave their properties because they need to care for their animals. Some residents have lost their homes and their cars, and they can’t leave the area to live in FEMA-funded hotels more than an hour away and keep their jobs, she said.
FEMA has programs to rebuild or replace homes that are damaged, condemned, or washed away, Davis noted, but local residents “need a place to live until that happens, or until they are able to find other solutions.”
The Davis family has teamed with a builder in McDowell County to provide “relief cabins” that include insulation, a generator to supply electricity, baseboard heaters, and a composting toilet in a small bathroom, among other features.
The Davis family has donated 10 acres of their own land to place relief cabins for locals who do not have their own properties. Once a family’s long-term home is rebuilt and the cabin is no longer needed, it will be warehoused in the area for future use if another disaster strikes.
“People ask me how I’ve gotten through the past month, working every single day, feeding people breakfast, lunch, and dinner from 5:30 in the morning to nighttime, and then getting up and doing it the next day. It’s because my cup is filled again and again seeing people feel like there is hope,” Davis said.
“When you go through something like this where so many are missing and gone, so many no longer have homes, and the life you knew will be forever changed, even the slightest bit of hope gives you strength to keep going and feel like everything will be OK.”
