This Old House

Kevin: In September of 2024, Hurricane Helene brought devastating rain and winds to western North Carolina.

Man: When the first tree hit, it shook the whole house.

Kevin: No one was prepared for what was about to happen.

Man #2: Is that a propane tank?

Man #3: Yeah, dude.

Man #2: That's scary.

Jim: We were at the point that we were hanging on to the gutters.

We heard our neighbors screaming for their lives.

Paula: Houses on my street washed away like houseboats.

Matt: I realized that I made a mistake.

And I thought I'd put us all at risk.

I wish I'd gotten us out of there.

Kevin: Hi, there.

I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "This Old House" and to season 47, where we start in western North Carolina.

Last fall, Hurricane Helene tore through these mountains, and communities like Asheville, Swannanoa, and many others experienced catastrophic winds and extreme flooding, so much so that some homes literally washed away.

Over the next 11 episodes, we'll work with some families from these resilient towns as they rebuild their communities and their homes, making them stronger than ever.

Welcome to "This Old House: A Carolina Comeback."

September 24, 2024.

A hot, muggy day in Asheville, North Carolina.

A band of thunderstorms worked their way through the mountains and valleys of Western Carolina.

What most people didn't know is that the weather they were experiencing was connected to a much larger force over a thousand miles away.

By 11: 00 a.m.

that morning, a tropical cyclone, the ninth of the season, was off the Yucatn Peninsula.

The National Hurricane Center saw a jump in wind speed and gave the storm a name -- Helene.

Allie: Asheville is known to get a lot of rain.

We really didn't think much of it.

Kevin: As the storm plowed northward across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the wind speed jumped, and by early morning it was a full-blown hurricane.

Still hundreds of miles away, the governor of North Carolina declared a state of emergency.

Melinda: We knew the storm was coming our way.

We were worried and a little bit scared, but, you know, weren't expecting too much damage.

Kevin: Back in the small town of Swannanoa, Jim and Allie lived in a quiet neighborhood of former factory housing built in the 1920s.

Jim: Kind of prepped, got the house ready to stay at home and hunker down for a couple days.

Kevin: Paula lived several miles downstream from Allie and Jim.

She lived close to the river but felt no danger.

Paula: I never really considered leaving.

In the past, the storms hadn't really had flooding get that close to my home.

Kevin: A few miles up the road in North Asheville, Matt and Melinda had no worries about flooding.

They and their two children lived on a mountain.

Matt: My wife, who's always already very paranoid about the giant trees in our neighborhood, made us all sleep in the basement.

Melinda: So we set up the lights and we had a movie and our dog Rosie downstairs, and we were just trying to make it fun for the kids.

Man: Alright, there's the heavy rain band.

Kevin: Thursday night was a rain event.

By sunup, hopes were on the rise.

Matt: I thought we had made it.

And then the wind picked up like crazy.

Melinda: I would say the first tree probably fell on the house around 6:30 or 7:00.

[ Tree limbs cracking ] Matt: It made the whole house shake, and I decided to go check out upstairs and see what the damage was.

So I went to my daughter's room and this is where I saw... Jenn: Oh, wow.

Matt: A new decorative branch.

So I was like, obviously something terrible has happened.

So I came back this way, and my child's playroom was up here.

And that's when I opened this door, and... Jenn: Oh, Matt!

Matt: ...pretty much everything's gone.

Like, it's all open to the outside.

Kevin: How did the kids react to the whirling wind and then trees landing on the house?

Melinda: Um, the kids were terrified.

We were all pretty terrified.

[ Tree limbs cracking ] We had about six to seven trees hit the house.

[ Crashing ] One which took the whole roof off of the right side of our home.

Matt: So all the light fixtures, the electrical plugs and everything were just -- Water was shooting out everywhere.

I started walking down the stairs, and that's when the other tree hit and took out this part of the house.

This is when I realized, like, the house was going to be gone.

Jenn: So this is just a series of events of tree after tree after tree.

And then was it after this tree that you guys decided to... "We need to get out of here"?

Matt: Um, we were -- we were trapped at this point.

So we huddled in the basement and I looked out the window and I saw a large tree go cartwheeling by into my neighbor's house.

And at that point, I... I realized that I made a mistake.

And I thought I had put us all at risk.

Kevin: What do you wish you had done?

Matt: I wish I had gotten us out of there.

Kevin: That realization came to you at that moment?

Matt: Yep.

And it was, you know, I... I didn't know that we were going to make it out of there.

And that was -- that was a rude awakening.

Kevin: In Swannanoa, the flooding happened with shocking speed, turning familiar streets into rushing torrents in a matter of minutes.

Man: It looks like the bridge is still holding, but honestly, I can't tell.

Kevin: Jim and Allie realized that they too were trapped.

Allie: Car stalled out in front of our driveway so we couldn't even exit.

Jim: And I was like, "Well, we're stuck."

Allie: Then we went back into the house and then it started coming up through the floorboards and the floor vents.

Jim: And at that point I was like, if worse comes to worse, I'm going to get on the roof.

And the only way that I know how to do that is keeping a door open.

Furniture started floating and falling over.

I told Allie we have to get out and onto the front porch.

Kevin: How are you with this plan at that point?

Allie: I mean, I just trusted him that he knew what to do.

So I just got off the kitchen counter and we noticed the foam blocks were in the front bedroom and they were floating, and we grabbed them and we went out the front door.

Jim: And our dog, Piper, was in a backpack on my back, strapped onto me, and the water was about two feet when we exited.

Kevin: You, Jim, deciding to leave the front door open, although you still had to fuss with the storm screen door.

Jim: Yeah, I had to push that all open with all my body weight, and when I got to the point where I knew that I kind of had to tread water and the dog was in the backpack at that point, I put her onto one of those floating blocks that we had.

Kevin: Right.

Jim: And within 15 minutes we were holding on to the gutters.

Kevin: I mean, are you floating up to the gutters?

Are you walking on the railing?

Allie: We held on to the banisters and kind of hold on to the poles until we were able to float, to hold on to the gutters and traverse around the house, to get to the back of it.

Kevin: Allie, when you're here, are you sort of just looking at the roof or as you look out, can you -- Are you looking around?

Allie: No.

On our street it was a river, so we saw cars going by.

We saw propane tanks.

Man: Is that a propane tank?

Man #2: Yeah, dude.

Man: That's scary.

Jim: At the point that we were hanging on to the gutters, we heard our neighbors screaming for their lives just for help to get out and neighbors getting caught in attics.

Man: We are punching our way out of the roof at this point in case the flood continues.

Kevin: So this idea of traversing, is that basically just hand over hand as you work your way around?

Jim: Yeah.

Kevin: And pulling the dog on the floaty mat.

Allie: Yep.

Kevin: You make your way around sort of counterclockwise.

You end up where?

Jim: At the back corner of the house.

And at that point a shed came at us, separated us.

I had to submerge underwater, but Allie was on this side of the house at that point and then got her up onto that lower roof line.

Kevin: Am I looking at the mats?

Allie: Yeah.

Kevin: Those are them?

Allie: Those are the foam blocks.

Kevin: They're still up on the roof.

Allie: Yeah, they have been there since the day of.

Jim is the biggest hero.

Kevin: How so?

Allie: He did everything for me that day.

Dang it.

[ Laughs ] I just love him so much.

Kevin: That's a good thing.

Allie: I know.

Kevin: You tell him that?

Allie: All the time.

And I always say "thanks for opening the door"... Kevin: [ Laughs ] Allie: ...because he -- I don't know how he knew that, but he did.

And he kept us safe.

[ Sniffles ] Kevin: Good for him.

Allie: Mm-hmm.

Kevin: I'm sure you do plenty for him as well.

Allie: Yeah, I do.

[ Laughs ] Kevin: In East Asheville, Paula was watching the event unfold on higher ground along with her neighbors.

Paula: The water rose in about 20 minutes from below that deck to beneath the windows.

Richard: Yeah.

Paula: But when the water hit the bottom of the window, we were like, "Okay, we might not be high enough here."

Richard: That's right.

Paula: So we had to climb up through the woods.

Richard: So you decided to go to high ground.

What was your route?

Paula: Well, I had a dog under my arm and a giant suitcase.

Richard: And a suitcase, yeah.

Paula: A suitcase, and we pretty much climbed up right through this wall right here.

And my friend that was with me hoisted my suitcase and all their crap, and a crock pot with meatloaf in it.

Richard: Really?

Paula: And we went up the hill.

We turned around to just watch the water, and that's when we saw the first house float by.

And the water was so strong that it actually twirled the house.

And it floated down the river and it hit some trees.

Oh!

[ Tree limbs cracking ] Man: Those are trees.

Paula: The sound is what got me the most.

Like if you crumple up a water bottle.

Richard: Yeah, the crunch-crunch.

Paula: Crunch noise.

Richard: Yeah.

Paula: That's the sound, and that sound kind of triggers me.

11 houses on my street washed away like houseboats.

They just washed away down the river.

Kevin: By now, local 911 operators were so overwhelmed, calls were being diverted to dispatchers hundreds of miles away.

Back in Swannanoa, Jim and Allie made it to a neighbor's roof and waited for help.

Eventually, their salvation came from an unexpected source, a neighbor with a kayak who was making rescue runs throughout the flooded neighborhood.

John: I panicked, and I grabbed my kayak and skirt and then my life jacket, and then we ended up down at the water and my jaw just, like, dropped.

I just never dreamed the water would get up to the gutters of the houses.

It was just brown lake.

You could see the rooftops.

I heard people screaming.

Allie: And then all of a sudden here he comes.

And he just said, "I'm here to get you."

So he took us one by one.

He took the dog first and then he took me.

I held on to the back of his kayak, went in the water again, and he just said, "Kick for your life."

So then he just took us to higher ground.

And then that's when we saw Piper, our dog.

And then we both just started crying.

Kevin: Heroes were everywhere that day, including in North Asheville.

Matt: My neighbor Tony was banging on the windows and we opened the garage and he was like, "We need to get -- Everybody needs to get out of here."

My neighbor is a good friend.

And... To put himself at risk like that, it was -- it was amazing.

So yeah, we -- we -- we grabbed our family and we -- we took off running with him.

Melinda: We were thankful that he was able to, you know, check on us and direct us to where a safe area was because we weren't aware of what our next step would be at that point until we heard his voice.

Matt: We were in shock.

You know, we didn't -- I called a friend of mine because the the phones went down intermittently and we made it to a fire station.

And I called a friend of mine that lived out of town and... I was -- I was like, "Call -- Call my mom.

And, you know, just tell her we're okay."

Kevin: Not everyone was able to make it to safety.

Paula: We had one neighbor that refused to leave.

The next we heard he had gotten onto his roof with his dog, and somebody had seen him float by.

Yeah, they found his body two days later, so... Kevin: Paula is one of the lucky ones.

Not only did she survive, her house is one of the only ones still standing in her neighborhood.

Richard: So why do you think this house survived?

Paula: My house is the newest house in probably the whole development.

It was built in 2001.

It was built by an architect who was dabbling with whether or not manufactured homes could be kind of affordable housing.

Richard: Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Paula: So four parts of it are manufactured.

And then there's stick built around it.

Richard: All built, all bolted together?

Paula: Bolted together and bolted to the foundation.

Richard: Really?

Paula: And I'm pretty sure that's why it didn't move.

Richard: Yeah.

Paula: This was absolutely a geological event.

The Army Corps of Engineers says the river moved nine feet away from me.

So therefore I'm no longer in a floodplain.

Kevin: The scale of destruction was overwhelming.

As the immediate shock began to wear off, families faced an impossible question.

Should they rebuild?

Paula: I have to rebuild.

I have to hope the real estate rebounds.

Matt: I absolutely did consider not going back.

You know, as much as I love my neighbors and what they did for us, going back there is definitely a choice and it's a hard choice.

Melinda: I always felt like that we would rebuild.

Even with the ceiling open, when I'm in there, I just want to be home in my house.

Matt: We're three months post storm right now and we're trying to, you know, get the ball rolling on a lot of that stuff.

Kevin: As our North Asheville and East Asheville homeowners make plans with their builders, in Swannanoa, Jim and Allie made their decision quickly and are already underway.

Jim: I really didn't have much of another option.

There was no way to get out of my mortgage.

You know, the financing that I had on the HVAC system that we just installed, um, we'd have to figure out something else.

There's no way that I could afford another mortgage or rent at the same time.

Allie: We're rebuilding our house.

Kevin: Why?

Allie: Because we love it, and we want to go back.

I mean, I want Swannanoa to come back bigger and better than ever.

Kevin: And so the cleanup and demolition has started?

Your minds have shifted to the rebuilds?

Allie: Yep.

Jim: Yep, it's started already.

Kevin: Confident that you can get it done and it's the right decision?

Jim: Absolutely.

Allie: Yes, very much so.

Kevin: Good.

Well, we'll follow along.

We'll help you out with that.

Allie: Thank you.

Kevin: Their neighbors, Cat and Jeremy, are signing on with the same builder as Allie and Jim.

Jeremy: That's actually another factor in -- as to why we decided to stay, that people are going to rebuild, maybe even more than before.

Cat: I think quite -- quite a bit of people are going to be moving back.

I think the homeowners have really come together and, um, you know, we have frequent meetings and talk about kind of different issues.

And it's been really, um, a terrible and nice way to get to know our neighbors.

I think we know them better than we ever have before, for sure.

Kevin: And so is their neighbor, Miah, whose family has been on this street for generations.

Miah: I remember my grandfather.

There was a couch always up against this wall and he took so many naps here.

Like, this was his napping area.

Kevin: For her, rebuilding meant honoring the past while creating something new.

Miah: A new safe place.

And I think, um, I'm going to incorporate, you know, my grandparents as much as possible.

And I -- Yeah, it will be a safe place again.

Kevin: Hey, Tommy.

Tom: Hey, Kevin.

How are you?

Kevin: Alright.

So, interesting story with this whole little village.

I mean, worker housing.

So modest, all for rent.

But everyone I've talked to who lives here, they're like, "We can't believe how well our homes are built."

And they can't believe they're still here after the flood.

Tom: Yeah, I'm surprised that they're all here, too.

I mean, the raging water coming down here.

I mean, lots of times it takes these houses and it pushes them off of the foundation.

Kevin: Yeah.

Tom: I thought of, like, why didn't they all get pushed off the foundation?

The first thing I noticed was this concrete slab.

All of these houses have porches with a poured concrete foundation, which was rare back in the '20s.

Probably done, you know, all by hand, but it's a lot of weight that's fastened to the foundation and to the structure.

So any water coming down just pushed away.

Kevin: Right.

So this is a slab here.

We've got a little crawl space, a little foundation all the way around.

Is it tied to that little foundation?

Tom: It's sitting on it.

They didn't really do ties.

They basically set it on the foundation and mortared it in place.

So that seal broke over time.

But it also has a novelty siding, which is a six-inch siding, that shiplap.

But if you look at right here, look at the siding, that's all nailed and it's all nailed on every board.

So the nails are like six inches apart and they're three quarters of an inch thick.

Alright?

And these are cut nails.

Kevin: Wow.

Tom: So the water pushing against the foundation can't break the the wall.

So it falls over and it's really a well-built wall.

Kevin: So in this case the siding thick, nailed all up.

It's also the sheathing.

Right?

This is siding right to -- Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the shiplap -- there's a shiplap right here.

So you have the scoop piece that comes up and the shiplap or the half lap right here goes on top, keeping the rain from running into the building.

But I think they built the house really well.

I mean, this is 2x4 construction.

But look, they've got diagonal bracing in all the corners.

So you've got a diagonal brace that runs to a post down to the sill.

And on this other side, you've got another diagonal brace that runs from this corner down to the sill.

And they both are in a V direction like this.

What that does is it basically keeps the wall movement and lessens it on a windy day.

In this case, it's basically you got the water pushing against it along with the thick siding and all the nails.

So you get a diagonal brace in this corner that goes this way, one that way, one here, down here, the other one the other way.

All of that is to help the movement of the building and keep it tighter, longer.

But what held it in place -- I noticed all of these houses have chimneys that go up through here.

Well, there was a big chimney that went up through here and there was a big fireplace on this side.

The chimney got narrower, but it was still -- and another big fireplace on that side.

Same thing on that side of the house.

Kevin: Four fireplaces in this house is kind of remarkable.

Tom: It is, and think of the weight of the bricks.

You probably got like 3,000 pounds in each chimney right here, pushing down into the ground.

So the water going against it, along with the slab, the diagonal bracing, it's not going to get pushed off of the foundation.

Kevin: So worker housing built in the 1920s.

But despite that, according to you, well-built?

Tom: I think it's very well-built, yeah.

Kevin: And homeowners, pretty much everyone we talked to wants to come back and rebuild.

You don't think that decision is crazy?

Tom: I don't think it's crazy at all.

I love houses like this.

This is great for one-floor living.

Kevin: Yeah.

Tom: Three bedrooms.

It's great.

Kevin: All three of these former mill houses are being renovated by one builder.

I'm sure Jim and Allie are going to be pleased here, getting your stamp of approval on the houses.

Tom: I hope, I hope.

Kevin: Hey, Chris, Nick.

Good to see you guys.

Both: Good to see you.

Kevin: So we've spoken to everyone and they all want to come back and rebuild.

And I hear you guys have signed on for the task to help us with a few houses.

Chris: Yeah, it's going to be a wild ride, but we -- I ran into Jim and Allie early and, you know, we're all kind of from around the area.

So we just kind of knew this was where we were going to start rebuilding.

Kevin: This is the place.

Chris: Yep, it is.

Nick: That's right.

This is our hometown.

This is where we want to be.

Kevin: Good.

Well, we're glad you're on board.

And, Richard, Jenn, you guys saw some stuff too?

Richard: Yeah.

You know, I don't think you realize the devastation till you see it up close.

It's just amazing.

This whole place is just crazy.

Jenn: And everybody is coming together to help each other.

So it's an incredible community here, and I'm looking forward to working on it with you guys.

Kevin: Yeah.

And everybody, including your folks, want to rebuild as well?

Richard: Absolutely.

Kevin: So we'll be working in all those locations, which means next time work begins.

So on behalf of all of us, I'm Kevin O'Connor signing off for "This Old House" here in western North Carolina.

Welcome aboard, fellas.

Chris: Thanks a lot.

We're going to need your help.

Kevin: Next time on "This Old House"... We're back in western North Carolina, where it's all about rebuilding after Hurricane Helene.

And here in Swannanoa, it's all about prepping this bathroom wall for tile.

Richard: And in East Asheville, the plumbers and electricians are here.

We're turning the corner.

This is a pretty cool unit.

Zack: And I'm in North Asheville helping the builder uncover how much damage there is in this house.

Man: So if you like demo, this is the place to be.

Kevin: That's next time.