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Before Hurricane Helene Struck Asheville

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Before Hurricane Helene Struck Asheville

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This picture shows the state of the city of Asheville, North Carolina, before Hurricane Helene struck.

Photo: Wikimedia

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This picture shows a part of Asheville after the hurricane struck, leaving many without homes.

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This photo shows where Asheville is on a map. The city is pretty near Tennessee, which is surprising - the damages hit a city not even that near the coast.

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Hurricane Helene struck Asheville, North Carolina on around September 27th, 2024. The hurricane first struck United States land on September 24th, 2024, just three days earlier. The hurricane formed due to a region of scattered thunderstorms down in the Caribbean Sea just a day prior. Helene saw up to 90% of major tourist streets get destroyed because of the flood.

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The economic impact caused to Asheville by Hurricane Helene was massive. Asheville was a very large tourism town, so there were many direct impacts to the economy as well as implied losses.

Community members lost jobs, leading to less economic success. It's estimated that directly after the hurricane, approximately 6,000 people lost their jobs.

The president of the largest tourism organization in Asheville, Explore Asheville, said that the hurricane was the cause of the city seeing up to $585M in lost visitor spending in just the first quarter of the year - leading to $2B over a year.

The water system in Asheville was also destroyed due to the hurricane, which was an expensive fix. That just leads into other damages, though, like homes, buildings, etc.

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The first and arguably most major impact from the Triple Bottom Line in Asheville was the impact to people. Some of the ways people were impacted:

Obviously, they lost households and properties, which often consisted of their livelihoods - gone in moments.

There were likely ~30 deaths of community members due the flooding. People lost family members, friends, pets, and relatives.

Many more people were injured, either directly from the water & extreme winds, or post-hurricane impacts like downed power line electrodcutions.

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The hurricane didn't only damage homes and livelihoods, it also damaged the environment. After a hurricane, there's often lots of debris that gets thrown all over the place, which can end up in water streams, etc. Here's some of the ways the hurricane impacted the planet:

Hurricane Helene uprooted a lot of plants and trees in Asheville, and killed many others due to the sheer amount of water.

Multiple important facilities were destroyed as part of the impact, which included gas stations. Gas stations obviously released gasoline into the water when they went up, which resulted in the water often being toxic or unsafe. Additionally, many power lines were downed in the hurricane, which led to an unsafe environment with water around electricity.

One resident described the outcome: "fallen trees blocking streets; roads turned into creek beds; power lines down everywhere; city water lines destroyed; bridges torn apart". Clearly, the damage was huge.

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Photo: Common Edge

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Addressing the Hurricane and the Impacts

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Addressing the Hurricane and the Impacts

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In the past, we've addressed hurricanes by focusing on public safety first, then infrastructure rebuilding and repair. The general rule of thumb is that the people impacted matter first, then rebuilding, and then futureproofing the city. In this hurricane, here's how the hurricane could be handled:

Ecocentric approach: Restore the ecosystems of lost animals and plants.

Anthropocentric approach: Protecting and restoring human lives, rebuilding communities, and managing/fixing economies.

Technocentric approach: Let things naturally slide, and most things will resolve themselves. However, technology is a big plus and can be used in the future to be able to mitigate future risks and prevent this from happening again. Some tech changes, for example, could be improving the power lines so that they're above ground and more automated protection that would have prevented certain issues.

Photo: Hurricane Helene Recovery; The Air Force

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Why Hurricane Helene and the Asheville Flood are important

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Why Hurricane Helene and the Asheville Flood are important

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First and foremost, the impact of hurricanes and floods directly correlates to the damage. It also significantly impacts our future understanding of:

A) What can happen with hurricanes and how they can develop

B) How we can help in-the-moment mitigate the damages

C) How we can quickly respond

So, with that, the 3 biggest ways the Asheville Flood and Hurricane Helene are important are:

It improves our understanding. We can further understand what hurricanes do and how we can react.

It improves our structures. By taking out the old structures, we're able to develop new and improved technology in houses. Additionally, it allows us to understand what we need to upgrade, like our electricity poles.

It improves our ecosystems. Even despite the flood, it helped cycle our nutrients and animal ecosystems.

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How Hurricane Helene and the Asheville Flood changed our view on the Environment and shifted our responsibilities to the environment

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How Hurricane Helene and the Asheville Flood changed our view on the Environment and shifted our responsibilities to the environment

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Whenever a hurricane strikes, it shows the vulnerability of our technology to extreme natural weather events. It shows deforestation, inadequate flood management, troubling power management, etc, which eventually led us to change our view on the environment. The Environment provides us so much, and when we lose it in just minutes, it shifts our view.

This also led us to shift our responsibilities in the environment to prioritize future situation prevention and to be able to react to events like this proactively rather than reactively.

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 1

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 1

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The weather station at Asheville's airport recorded 13.98 inches of rainfall in a three-day period.

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 2

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 2

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Not so fun a fact, but Hurricane Helene & the Asheville Flood destroyed ~80% of the city's River Arts District.

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 3

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Asheville Flood & Hurricane Helene Fun Fact 3

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Even train cars were flooded away and moved downtown from the floods.

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Just 8 years earlier - on October 1st, 2016, Hurricane Matthew struck North Carolina. At this time, the hurricane was one of the most damaging ones of the year. The hurricane struck land first in Cuba before a couple days later striking the coastline side of North Carolina. Even Asheville, which was on the literal other side of the state, was hit.

While this hurricane did not bring water damages to Asheville, it brought WINDS. The winds reached up to 50ish miles per hour, once again damaging trees and power lines. About 25 people died in Hurricane Matthew, but it's hard to get a number on how hard it struck Asheville.

CONNECTIONS between the Hurricanes:

Both hurricanes caused massive amounts of rainfall leading them to leave a long lasting or permanent record of damages.

Both hurricanes led to further discussions of Climate Change in America. Hurricane Matthew, per Wikipedia: "In a scientific assessment, researchers found that Helene had 10% more rain, had winds that were 13 miles per hour more intense, and drew energy from water that was 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer due to climate change."

DIFFERENCES between the Hurricanes:

Hurricane Matthew started from weather off the coast of Africa while Hurricane Helene started from weather in the Caribbean Sea.

Helene was a Category 4 storm, while Matthew peaked at a Category 5. Hurricane Helene also ran more off the shores while Matthew went straight in for the land.

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Photo: Britannica

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Photo: NC Newsline

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Photo: WLOS

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Photo: WUNC

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Photo: National Geographic

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Photo: NC Newsline

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Photo: Samaritan's Purse