Two years later, Helene survivors are still rebuilding lives

Almost two years after the storm tore across western North Carolina, a general store is rising again, a couple find new meaning in an old symbol and an unlikely child is growing.

A sign

Kate Donald was in Florida when Helene struck. Her husband, David, was at their Swannanoa home with their dog, Coco, watching floodwaters rise. Within about 45 minutes, the water rose almost to the roof.

Standing on a laundry basket, David forced himself through a small attic opening while talking with a 911 operator. Coco jumped into the water, forcing David to yank her back into the attic by her harness. Kate was eventually brought onto the 911 call, in case the couple needed to say a final goodbye.

A neighbor paddling through the floodwaters on a kayak heard David and cut a hole through the roof, allowing him and Coco to escape the attic. David then spent more than two hours on the roof as sheds, debris and other objects swept by. He eventually made it to higher ground with help from another kayaker.

Floodwaters destroyed the Donalds’ home, their vehicle, most of their belongings and almost all of David’s DJ equipment. The couple returned to see what they could salvage and meet with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. Everything in the wreckage of their home was covered in mud, which was knee-deep in places.

As they drove away, Kate looked back and saw a rainbow over the house. She said it “felt like a sign that we would be OK.”

Before the water rose too high, David sealed his computer and iPad in waterproof totes. When he later opened one, both were dry. That became the beginning of rebuilding his business.

He was back behind the turntables at a wedding about a week after Helene, using equipment available at the venue after the event was moved to Raleigh. Some couples told him they would understand if he could not fulfill their bookings.

“I made a commitment to these people,” David recalled thinking. “If I can do it, then I will do it.”

Help came from relatives, friends, strangers and even people the Donalds had not heard from in years. Donations helped David replace his equipment. Someone gave the couple a truck. As of Aug. 27, the Donalds’ DJ business is booked solid into 2027.

After the hotel rooms and temporary housing that followed Helene, the Donalds now rent their best friends’ home in Asheville while those friends are out of the country.

Recently, another sign appeared.

The Donalds were in Florida to meet their new granddaughter. She was born July 4 and had complications, leaving the family uncertain whether she would be able to go home or would have to remain in neonatal intensive care. From their hotel window, David and Kate saw a rainbow.

For Kate, the two moments seemed connected. “Now I'm going to look for more meaning when I see a rainbow,” she said.

Second act

Peter O’Leary, mayor of the village of Chimney Rock, and his wife operated Bubba O’Leary’s General Store on Main Street for more than three decades. The building, a former movie theater dating to 1927, was among the most visibly damaged structures on Main Street after the Rocky Broad River ripped through the village.

Water and debris collapsed a wall. Floodwaters poured through the store and basement, tearing away floors and merchandise and dragging a gas pump through the building. O’Leary estimated about $1.5 million in losses.

His home, an apartment above another Main Street building, escaped direct damage but the destruction of water and sewer service made it uninhabitable for 10 months.

O’Leary returned to Chimney Rock after he was briefly stranded on Tybee Island, Ga., during the storm. “It was like I went into ‘mayor mode,’ trying to help people mode,” he told the Citizen Times on Aug. 9.

He and Village Administrator Steve Duncan worked through the immediate problems, accounting for residents, restoring access, determining which buildings were safe and figuring out how a small municipal government could rebuild.

Eventually, the remnants of Bubba O’Leary’s had to be torn down. O’Leary and his wife wondered whether that might be the end of a 34-year chapter of their lives.

Flood insurance and a Small Business Administration loan made rebuilding financially possible. What convinced them to do it, however, was something else.

Volunteers poured into Chimney Rock. Faith-based nonprofit Spokes of Hope helped organize workers and materials to rebuild small businesses. The Tryon International Equestrian Center provided space where about a dozen displaced merchants could operate temporary shops for months.

There, customers repeatedly told O’Leary how much the store — and Chimney Rock itself — meant to them.

“I’m not doing this for me,” O’Leary said. “I’m doing this for everybody else.”

Now, the exterior of the new Bubba O’Leary’s building is almost completed; O’Leary hopes to reopen by Christmas.

Chimney Rock State Park reopened about 10 months after the storm. Main Street businesses began reopening about a month later, after water and sewer service were restored. O’Leary said his business now does about 60% of its normal sales, while attendance at Chimney Rock State Park is running about half of normal.

Major work remains. The rebuilding is not only about restoring what Helene destroyed, but also about preparing for another disaster. Some projects will take years.

True to name

Almost a week before Helene, Jewelia Crowe started having contractions. She and her fiancé, Samuel Dillard, drove to Cherokee Indian Hospital, where doctors found problems and transferred her to Mission Hospital in Asheville. She was admitted Sept. 21. The couple heard a hurricane was coming, but expected the mountains to sap its strength.

The pregnancy already seemed improbable. Crowe said she was told since age 15 that she could not have children. Dillard, after surgeries, said he was told his chances of fathering a child were “one in a million.”

About midnight Sept. 27, 2024, Crowe began to labor in earnest. Outside, Helene’s winds roared. Crowe watched light poles sway through the hospital window and during her final contractions yelled, “The trees are gonna go!”

Doctors delivered the child at 1:41 a.m., almost three months early. Crowe feared the baby might not survive. Soon after he reached the neonatal intensive care unit, the hospital lost power and water and switched to backup generators.

Crowe was medically cleared to leave within two days, but Mission allowed the couple to stay four additional days because travel was still dangerous after the storm. The couple bounced among hotel rooms for about a week before bringing a camper to Pride RV in Waynesville. Their baby remained at Mission, where Crowe and Dillard visited him daily.

They brought the child home Dec. 8, 2024, with oxygen and a heart monitor in tow. Today, the child weighs about 25 pounds. His parents say he has chronic lung disease and an extra vein in his heart that doctors monitor, but a hole in his heart healed on its own.

Even his name seems prescient. Crowe and Dillard narrowed their choices to Grayson and Phoenix before Helene ever arrived. Both kept leaning toward Phoenix.

For parents who once wondered whether they could have a child at all, then watched that child arrive 10 weeks early as a historic storm raged outside, the name has taken on even more meaning.

“Phoenix just kind of showed us from the start he’s a fighter,” Dillard said. “He’s never going to give up, and he’s kind of taught us to do the same.”