Hurricane Helene Flood

Nobody Tells You

by Roger French

Nobody tells you that floods are noisy. It was not so much the rushing water, since the boulders that create rapids were, like us fellow riparians, in over their heads. It was more the random, car-crash impacts that were felt in your spine more than sensed in your eardrums. It was giant, uprooted trees slamming into giant, still-rooted trees in epic encounters that neither anticipated—the audible evidence of unstoppable forces meeting immovable objects. It was the sound of both dreams for the future and long-standing traditions being crushed like a waterborne RV against a now-low bridge.

Nobody tells you that floods are stinky. It started with an indefinable downstream aroma caused by an upstream urban flush of every chemical known to humans—or produced in the human body. Of giant tanks spewing propane like rabid sperm whales swimming next to now-empty gas and oil cans. Of miles of plastic tubing that should not have a smell. In the weeks that followed, that turned to the smell of rot like dead fish during red tide but, as we knew from the ubiquitous search and rescue teams, it was probably more than that.

Nobody tells you about the mud, which, like its carrier, can appear in three states. As a liquid, it started as hundreds of miles of riverbank now suspended both in aqueous solution and disbelief. Then, as it thickened through evaporation into toxic sludge, quicksand pits formed where sidewalks once were. Dunes where there used to be roads. Swamps where restaurant tables and store shelves once stood. The mud stuck to everything like a refugee clinging to a raft. But its final, gaseous form was the most insidious. Dust. Less of an odor and more of a penetration via nostril. An aerosolizing event to put a COVID-era sneeze to shame, causing us to wonder what we were breathing, where we put those N95s, and if we should be wearing them. But there was nobody to ask.

Nobody tells you what to do when it floods. With no power, water, sewer, internet, or cell phone service, they really can't. In a tiny town with tenuous infrastructure and laissez-faire governance, and with communication deconstructed to bulletin boards and the grapevine, there was no discussion of whether we even should rebuild. Nobody there to point out that not only had the "great flood" that could never happen to us had happened, but that it would happen again. With terrible and tangible certainty.

Nobody tells you about Instagram philanthropists. About those who appear full of smiles and enthusiasm but who somehow were able to make posts "helping" in three other towns that day. Or about the rubberneckers who drive around Road Closed signs that were clearly not intended for them. And nobody tells you about the complete strangers who show up for charity and donated food - to take, not to give.

Nobody tells you that, like the floodwaters, the unified community spirit will ebb as surely as it flowed. That the airlifted meals and food trucks from Tennessee will stop. That the National Guard will pack up and leave when they run out of things to clean and places to dig out. Nobody warns you that petty squabbles put aside in disaster-facing solidarity will return with a vengeance, fueled, perhaps, by the vague but unspoken feeling that someone should be to blame for the damage and disruption. That someone needs to make it right.

Nobody tells you that, a year later, things are still not OK. That promised aid never arrived. That FEMA never came to the rescue. That the Governor is still requesting recovery dollars from the President. That the main road through the two-lane, no-stoplight town was repaired quickly only so that eighteen-wheelers could be rerouted around the collapsed interstate. That it is possible to not physically lose anything but still lose your entire way of life.

Nobody tells you about survivors' guilt—yours or theirs. Nobody tells you about that look you get when you tell people you went through the flood: part pity, part shame, part jealousy, part helplessness. Nobody tells you that, in your new home, nobody will ask what you went through. Nobody will ask why you are starting over from scratch and if that was your plan before Hurricane Helene.

Nobody tells you that having your world turned inside-out can turn out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to you, if you let it. That, like wildfire, floods can ignite root-level changes—both physically and metaphorically. That "good" and "bad" only exist in human judgment. That, in the end, what you make of life starts with acceptance of what is.

Well, now, someone has told you.