#NCStrong: Local police deliver first supplies to Marshall, NC
Published 12:10 am Saturday, October 5, 2024
Officers unload one of a number of full pallets from the back of a box truck in Marshall. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Dwight Cody, on the right in the blue shirt, talks with Sgt. Leonard who grew up in the area. In the background, you can see the supplies delivered, which go all the way around the room lilke this, leaving just the center of the room for standing. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
This was all the Ebbs Chapel fire department had when the convoy from Rowan arrived with multiple truckloads. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
The all-volunteer Ebbs Chapel Fire Department in Marshall was more than ready to receive the first load of donations for the community. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Roadblocks are in place for reasons like this - there is not enough shoulder to maneuver under the highest part of the tree, and the box truck traveling with Spencer, Granite Quarry and Cleveland officers had to work to get under this on the return trip. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
In many areas, vehicles like this side-by-side are the only ones that can get through. The owner of this one said he had been out on a search and rescue mission in Marshall, explaining the coating of mud. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Many traveling to Western NC to help are meeting with roadblocks to prevent travel on unsafe roads or areas. This was one off the exit to Marshall. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Dwight Cody, a volunteer firefighter in Marshall, NC, shared this photo of downtown Marshall before the floodwaters receded. When they did, a heavy layer of slick mud was left behind, in some cases filling parts of buildings. At the week's end the town was beginning to have any unsalvageble structures removed. Submitted photo
The skyline of the Western NC mountains is still beautiful as the sun begins to set. The silhouette of the ridges in the distance is one on postcards and in the memories of many North Carolinians, and this view hides the damage from Helene. Recovery efforts are underway, and if you listen to the residents there, they are a strong, resilient people who will rebound. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
The back of the trailer was filled to the top with supplies donated by the community that were then offloaded at the firehouse for distribution. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
The crew set up a relay system for unloading each truck and getting the supplies into separate categories inside the fire house. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
One of the tires on the trailer of Geranite Quarry Police Chief Tood Taylor's trailer leaned sideways by the time the group arrived in Marshall, but it fortunately straightened out when the supplies were unloaded. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
It all began with Spencer Police Chief Michael File calling to say the department was collecting donations to deliver to Western North Carolina. Granite Quarry and Cleveland joined in, and this crew, from all the departments, set off Thursday morning with five trucks, a trailer and a box truck to deliver to Marshall, NC in the mountains. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
MARSHALL — Dwight Cody and his wife, who live in Marshall, N.C., had not been able to reach their oldest daughter in a week by Thursday afternoon.
That was just one piece of information Cody, 58, a volunteer firefighter, shared when a cadre of police officers from Spencer, Cleveland and Granite Quarry arrived at Cody’s firehouse with the first delivery of supplies the community had received since Helene swept through.
Led by Spencer Police Chief Michael File and Granite Quarry Police Chief Chief Todd Taylor, the group of eight men drove a load of five pickup trucks, a 13-foot trailer and a box truck packed tight with supplies of everything from canned goods to diapers to medication up into the western North Carolina mountains.
And they agreed to let me come along to get first-hand look at what the area looks like and to see how some of our Rowan first responders are helping.
The area was devastated by the blast of Hurricane Helene, which caused river levels of both the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers to crest above record levels set in 1916.
Back on July 5, 1916, first one storm hit, then before the saturated ground could recover, on July 14, a Category 2 hurricane made landfall on the South Carolina coast, reaching the North Carolina mountains on July 15. Record rainfall was widespread. Reports state that between July 15-16, 22.22 inches of rain fell over parts of western North Carolina. Official reports are that 80 people were killed in total as a result of the flood, although the precise number of people who lost their lives will likely never be known.
Forward to Friday, Sept. 2, 2024. Helene, a Category 4 hurricane and likely the deadliest since Katrina, slammed into Florida then barreled her way up the country, striking Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
As of the most recent count end of day Friday, the death toll was 223 and climbing, and more than half of them were in the North Carolina mountains.
The roads are still in disrepair in much of the mountains area, and as you travel, you receive constant alerts, when you have cell service, about I-40 and I-26 remaining closed in some stretches. There are alerts letting tractor-trailer drivers know certain roads will not support their weight and they will get stuck. In some areas of Asheville, you can hear alarms going off intermittently.
On the side of I-40 west as you drive along, the scenery is at times almost normal. Trees are changing colors, traffic is moving smoothly and it feels like life as usual. And then you come to a swath of trees, root balls in the air, all flattened in a large path as if a large hand reached down and swatted them all.
You pass fields that are not fields but massive mud flats, and when you look closely, you realize you are not looking at rocks but at the bottoms of upside down cars, still buried in the silt.
You pass what might be mistaken for construction, but is in fact a foundation where a house, or two, once sat.
But life is still going on, there is still activity, still movement.
At the bottom of the exit for Marshall there was a road block with law enforcement checking on travelers’ destinations and contacts, because the roads off that exit were blocked in some areas by debris, and in others, too unstable to support large vehicles.
The group stopped for a quick break at a convenience store, and a truck pulling a trailer came in alongside them with a side-by-side vehicle on the trailer. The side-by-side was covered in mud, top to bottom. The owner said he had grown up in Marshall, and though he no longer lives there, he felt obligated to help. The vehicle was covered in mud after a day helping with search and rescue, he said.
Another man and his wife were there pulling an empty trailer that had been packed with supplies they had just dropped off in another community, and he thought they would probably be making another trip back next week.
As the group got back on the road, it became more and more narrow, with constant switchbacks. There was no longer a shoulder, and in most instances the roads were next to a small stream. The road was in a valley of sorts, and on the flatter land on one side, houses cropped up from time to time, most with a wooden bridge crossing the stream to reach them. On the other side, steep hillsides had houses built on ledges or outcroppings, with their backs pressed to the mountainside.
A few here and there showed some sign of life, but most were empty. Some had long been abandoned, but not all. And yet, the activity, the life, was not there.
We were driving through what felt like a ghost town.
The group’s arrival at the Ebbs Chapel Fire Station was met with smiles and quiet greetings, along with some ribbing for Taylor. He’d packed the trailer so full that one of the back tires was nearly sideways. On the trip up, an even larger trailer was disabled on the roadside with an entire axle that had sheered off, likely from too much weight.
“Yeah, I pushed it, but once we unload it, it’ll be fine,” laughed Taylor, who was determined to bring all the donations from his community. The amount of supplies, from across Spencer, Salisbury, Granite Quarry, Faith, Cleveland and points across Rowan County, made the faces of Cody, his son and another firefighter light up.
Cody brought us in to the one-room portion of the firehouse attached to the garage were trucks and tools are stored, and showed us what they were down to — one small desk with a few boxes on top.
“My son and I have been picking up supplies at the co-op and delivering hot meals, water and military rations to individual homes,” said Cody, but the supplies are limited at best. The local Ingles grocery store has not been able to get a delivery, their shelves are nearly bare, and they are only allowing so many people in at a time, he said.
Cody said a number of people who live in the area have spring water, or gravity water, and initially they turned away bottled water, but “then the spring water got cloudy with the silt, so they started accepting the bottled water to drink.” In addition, the town’s water treatment plant was damaged and there has been some concern about possible contamination of water and of the mud.
He said the prognosis he has heard for getting deliveries back to normal is six weeks.
“We’re a poor community, but a lot of people have been chipping in, volunteering,” Cody said. “There are lots of family members that have been flooded out, don’t have anywhere to go. My wife is the director of the health department for our county and they have opened a shelter at the Madison High School Early College. So there’s showers there, cots, the Red Cross is there and they serve meals. I think one night, Saturday maybe, we had 250 people in the shelter.”
One day, he said a van pulled up with 28 people inside who had been stranded with no gas and nowhere to go, and they were welcomed.
“A lot of the people that have homes along the river, they’re kinda poor, like us, and they’ve lost everything they had,” Cody explained. “There’s a little community called Rollins that’s down the river and it washed just about all the homes down there away. One of the ladies that works for my wife at the health department saw her home go down the river. But, this is a strong community.”
Among the stories of loss, are the stories of resourcefulness and rescue.
“There was a little lady that the water started getting up in her house,” Cody said, “and some of the railroad people took one of their backhoes, and she came to the back of her house, and she got her dog and crawled out of a window and they hauled her out in a bucket. There’s been so many good things happen with this. It’s brought our community tighter, and with all the donations you guys brought and other donations we know are coming in, the health department has set up a store at the high school” offering clothing and blankets and toiletries and those kinds of supplies and folks can come in and get what they need for free.
At this point, I asked Cody about those who are still missing, and his answer stunned me.
“Yes, there are several people missing in our area, hundreds from Buncombe County alone, including my daughter, and multiple bodies have been found. They have been searching, and they have brought in cadaver dogs,” Cody said. “We haven’t been able to reach our oldest daughter since last week.”
Cody has lived in the same community all of his life, having worked for a time at the local prison and served as a firefighter, and his wife working in public service. He said his sister-in-law runs My Sister’s Place in the town of Marshall, a domestic violence shelter, and the two-story building was flooded. When flood waters receded, the structure’s first floor was filled with mud.
“It didn’t make it to the second floor but it did get to the 15th step,” he said. Volunteers have been working to get the mud out so the center can reopen, but he added that it might need “taking a fire hose and blasting all that mud out.”
He and his wife, who live just up the road from the firehouse, lost power for “five or six days, and we had some trees come down, but we came out good compared to a lot of other people, other than not being able to find our daughter.”
The entire group spent a solid hour and a half relaying supplies from the trucks to the firehouse, separating items into categories to make it easier to distribute. There was laughter and joking but Cody also said he was not putting the word out about the delivery in order to make sure the building was not looted. There have been reports, he said, of supply deliveries having issues with people trying to take advantage or even steal, and he was determined to make sure those supplies got where they needed to be.
Once all the supplies were unloaded, a pile of clothing, towels, blankets and similar items had been separated and were loaded onto trucks for delivery to the high school for the store for people who need a change of clothes or other items for comfort or to just feel clean, said Cody.
Sgt. Brian Leonard, of the Spencer Police Department who grew up in the Marshall area, said when File first mentioned the idea of collecting supplies to then deliver to the mountains, he knew he could help.
“This is my home, my people,” he said during a short break from unloading. “I am so glad we could offer this help.”
After all the work was complete, Cody asked if a word of prayer would be alright.
“Absolutely,” File said. “In fact, we have our chaplain with us.”
Pastor Sam Mills, the minister of New Hope Baptist Church and the Spencer police chaplain, offered a word of prayer for the community, for the officers, and for all trying to recover from the disaster.
The trip home was quieter. There was still laughter, but as the sun began to set behind us, and the beautiful skyline of the mountains was outlined in dusk, the contributions and the gratitude sank in.
“Those people were genuinely thankful for us to be there,” said File. “Best day we could have hoped for.”
Spencer Mayor Jonathan Williams said he was “incredibly proud of the men and women of our departments for their efforts. They truly have hearts of service, and they represent our community well.” He said the level of commitment is indicative of the teams both File and Fire Chief Michael Lanning have been working to put together, and they have the same outlook that the rest of the town leadership has.
“Our goal is recognizing community needs and working to fill them,” Williams said. “And there are times when the community is larger than just your town. This is one of those times, and we’re glad to have people so ready to help.”
Granite Quarry Mayor Brittany Barnhardt said because she had phone signal during the first few days after Helene, her “phone rang off the hook.”
She said she worked to connect people and resources with where they needed to go, and was glad when the opportunity came to join forces with Spencer, one of the first locations to put the word out about donations.
“I had phone calls from companies, good Samaritans, et cetera, all wanting to help,” she said. “It was so overwhelming operating from a distance.” She said she had to turn her phone off for a short time to recover from a migraine, and when she turned it back on she had 74 missed calls and 39 text messages.
“The mayor of Wilmington said it best recently at a Mayor’s Convention,” she said. “They had just had a tropical storm in the east a few weeks ago that delivered more rain than expected, and he said no one stopped to ask if anyone was a Republican or a Democrat, they just helped, sent resources, and that’s how it should be. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions, but it’s been overwhelming to say the least, seeing the outpouring of love, support, giving and prayer throughout Helene. God bless WNC.”
Crews from first responders all over Rowan County have been going to western North Carolina all week, delivering supplies, helping clear debris, offering first aid, assisting in search, rescue and recovery. File and Taylor both said they hope donations continue to come in, and they will plan a second trip. Anyone interested in continuing to make contributions can drop them at the Spencer PD/town hall, the Granite Quarry town hall or in Faith or Cleveland.
There continue to be stories coming out of our mountains, stories of rescue, of loss, of recovery, of grief and of relief. The images inundate news and social media daily. As Barnhardt said, it’s an emotional roller coaster.
But this story has a happy ending. Friday morning, Cody messaged — his daughter was located, safe and sound.
