Asheville is genuinely fucked right now but I’ve also seen the beauty in humanity

[Self doxx] [Semi Rant]

Over the last few days I’ve seen my hometown get completely rattfucked over but have seen some beauty in the process.

Before Friday it was unthinkable that this amount of damage could happen here. We are hundreds of miles from the coast and supposed to be a ,,climate haven” but nevertheless half the town is underwater. And we’re the lucky ones — nearby towns like chiminy rock are completely gone, off the map. I can’t comprehend the destruction that I have borne witness to the past few days. Again, I can’t stress how unthinkable something like this in Asheville is.

On Thursday it started raining hard and most everything shut down, this continued through Friday morning. When it finally stopped I was able to see the height of the river, and words can’t express how scarily magnificent it was. I saw houses being washed away, the entire river arts district underwater and water half a mile up from where it normally is. Now, as it’s started to go down, we’ve been able to see some of the damage. It will be decades before things will be as they were.

Up until Sunday afternoon there was only one open road in or out of the county. Over a quarter of roads within the county are flooded or impassable.

Almost everywhere is out of gas too and we’re not sure when more is getting in.

Almost the whole town lost power, cell service and water Friday morning. They have had internet at a few different points (like the fire dept) and cell service is just now starting to come back on. Power is spotty, depending on whether there’s a tree down on your street.

The water situation is the true concern: Personally, I had plenty of drinking water stored but others aren’t as lucky. I am now getting extremely worried about my supply of water, because I only have a couple flushes of the toilet left . Again, I’m lucky that I’m only worried about flushing water and not drinking water.

It is likely that they won’t have the water back on for 2-6 weeks. The treatment facility has flooded and it’s still unreachable to diagnose the problem. Shit genuinely may get extremely ugly before then. In the daily media briefings, they’ve been saying that shipments of food and water would be here soon, but they’ve been saying soon for 3 days now. People are running out of water for flushing toilets, and no one’s showered in days. It’s getting to be a public sanitation worry. Depending on what I hear tomorrow morning, I may take up an offer from a friend to leave town. (I am so lucky that I can do so, many cannot.)

There is much more I could talk about, such as how other communities have been absolutely wiped off the map, how bad I want a shower, or some of the places that have been destroyed. This kind of climate disaster is something you truly can’t comprehend until you’ve lived it. The climate crisis is a series of videos you see online until you’re the one filming the videos yourself.

However there is a bit of a silver lining to me. This is the first time I feel like I’ve seen real community here. Whether it’s pushing a dead car, clearing a tree or sharing food I’ve never seen people help each other out in this way. Additionally, I have NEVER seen so many people outside walking around and talking with their neighbors. It’s insane how the moment trees block cars from neighborhoods, everyone is immediately in the streets creating third spaces. A few nights ago, some neighbors setup a movie night in the street (between two fallen trees and with a generator) and upwards of 50 people turned up to watch. When the gas lines started getting too long and people started yelling, random strangers came into the street to direct traffic for HOURS.

I see people helping people and it makes me happy.

~I’m not gonna proofread this cuz I’m too tired, my extremely lucky and privileged ass just want to dump some thoughts, maybe I’ll edit with some resources to donate or whatever in the morning. I’m not worried about doxxing myself because I was about to delete this account for a new one anyway.~

Update: It’s still seeming like it’ll get worse before it gets better so I’m going to leave town with a friend. It hurts because I feel like I’m abandoning my community but I also think it’s the right thing to do.