helene - foscoe, nc

Last Thursday, Appalachian State decided to cancel classes at 12:15. I had filled in for my collegue Lilith Nielander and I had taught her beginning Metals class at 8am while she was taking a group of students to New York City for a weekend visit. I then taught my casting class at 11:00 since the cancelation of classes was from 12:15 onward. I demonstrated the lost wax casting method and we cast some flasks that I had burned out overnight to test the new setup for the old kiln. Once the demo was complete I told the students to head out due to the storm. I stuck around and cast the rest of my flasks and a few students stuck around as well to work on projects. 

To be honest I wasn't expecting much from the storm. I stopped at the store on the way home and called Jill to see if we needed anything. We were both pretty chill about things. We had been getting rain for about two and half days straight due to a low front that had stalled out over our area and it had been a steady non stop kind of rain. When I stopped on the bridge that goes over Spice Bottom creek that crosses through our property I observed that the water level was up but not much more than anytime we get a major rain storm. I headed up the hill to the house and all was as usual. I went down to my shop to cut off the sprues from my belt buckle castings only to discover the roof was leaking in a couple spots so I set up buckets and moved a few of the tools around. 

Maya had gone to Charlotte for a music concert with a friend. We debated on whether she should go, but figured that she had really been looking forward to this, so we let her go. Later in the night we got a tornado warning around bedtime so we hustled the Liv down to the basement. There had been a tornado spotted near Grandfather Mountain so we waited things out for about 30 minutes. Jill and I told stories to Liv about tornados that we had witnessed in Illinois and the drills that we would do when we were kids in school. Liv were amazed as her and Maya have grown up in Wisconsin where we rarely had tornados and now here where we almost never would think of a tornado happening here in the mountains. This was the first sign that something was off. I kept reading that the effects of the hurricane would reach us by 6am the next morning. We would start seeing heavy rain midway through the night though.

I woke up early the next morning and the air had really warmed up and it was still raining. I walked the dog and went down to the shop to assess things there to make certain the leaks were not any worse. All was well, but the creek had gone up significantly and the wind was really picking up. I spent most of the morning sitting on the front porch as I watched the power of the storm. It was magnificent to watch at this point in the storm. The storm ramped up though and I thought to go check the basement. Once there, I discovered we were taking on rain through the drain in the floor. Water was back flowing in. I panicked to try and figure out why we were getting rain there. I assumed that our drain pipe that goes under our driveway and over the hillside was clogged. In the middle of the storm I decided to go get my hydraulic line that I use to unclog the pipe from the creek to the pond. Maybe I could unplug the pipe on the hillside. So, in the middle of the storm I am standing in the woods on hillside shoving a hydraulic hose of the pipe. By this time I am soaked to the bone and the line is clear. I go up to the house and go behind the house to discover that we have 3 -4 feet of water standing at the backside of the walkway between our house and garage. The ground slopes down there and the runoff from the hill behind the house has caused a steady stream of water to collect there. I waded in and tried to find a way to unclog the drain pipe there. Jill is standing out in the rain the entire time as she tries to help me and make certain I don't fall. I eventually come up with the plan of talking one of the gutters out of its drain pipe and rerouting the standing water via that flexible hose. I bent it over down into the standing water and eventually the water starts to recede in the area. By this time though our basement had been flooded and we now had muddy leafy water in the across the entire first level where I keep my 3D printers, laser cutter, office space, an extra bathroom, utility room, washer/dryer room, and guest room. At least I had stopped the flow of water into the house though. I went down to check the front yard and by this time the entire front yard was a lake but at the same time a rushing river. The little bridge that I built over our creek was fully covered with a rushing flow of water. My shop sits up slightly higher than the creek so water was not up to it yet, but it was inching closer. I forgot to mention that we lost power around the time that I discovered the water in the basement, so things were pretty exciting during the entire day. I kept watching the water level below the house in the front yard and debris from all over the neighborhood were floating across our yard. Like full trees, stumps, gas cans, building supplies, etc. By this time we have no cell service, no power and I'm thinking that I have severely underestimated the severity of the storm and what it was capable of doing...