As it stands -

On the morning of September 27th 2024, Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina. It’s something that none of us ever thought would happen, we who grew up here had always been told that the mountains would protect us, that they would break up strong winds from a cane and we would be safe, yet that's not what happened. The high winds with over 20in of rain was something that none of us were equipped to tackle, and while the weather stations said it would be bad, not a single soul could have predicted the severity of what that morning would bring to us in the mountains.

The rain soaked the soil, the mountain's soil is that of clay, and when clay is soaked it becomes slippery. In Buncombe County alone, 40% of trees were lost or damaged during the storm. We had several trees come down on our property, but a large oak tree that lived behind our shed would come to find its final resting place inside half our house, crushing two bedrooms, the hallway, and two bathrooms.

We filed a claim with our insurance the morning of the storm, before cell service for everyone was lost. It took a little over a month to find someone and get an approval on getting the tree out of the house. It was so large that they had to pull it out with a crane. It was removed October 31st 2024.

The early part of this year was spent going back and forth with the reconstruction company our insurance originally hired, and boy did they run us through the wringer. Constant back and forth about our belongings with no clear communication, as they had to sort and catalog all of our non salvageable items. In the end, it was almost three hundred pages of items that were non-salvageable, items that got so much water damage or crushed that they had become moldy and couldn’t be kept or saved. This company then, once our damaged items had been removed from the house, did demolition and remediation to the affected rooms.

But yet, this company price gouged their work, even admitted it to our insurance, and when it came time for them to send in an estimate for reconstruction, they sent an incomplete one. We then noticed that this company stole items that had not been deemed non-salvageable, prompting us to fire them and look for another contractor.

At this point it was the end of spring, we found a new contractor who was able to get an estimate made in a single weekend, unlike the original company who went back and forth for over a month about getting an estimate done and then sent in one that was incomplete. Our insurance sat on that estimate for three months, we had to reach out to North Carolina’s Insurance Commissioner to get it finally approved on July 15th 2025.

Our house is empty, no furniture, no appliances, no nothing. The team was ready to start as soon as approval came. Once approved, the company had to send bids out for work. They made a schedule to start September 15th 2025 and finish early March 2026. This was great, it gave us wiggle room as our coverage for temporary housing via our insurance ends March 25th 2026. Their goal was to get the roof done before our first snow, but in those months waiting for our insurance we noticed that the room in the basement that the original construction team did not do demolition and remediation work to because it was not marked as one of the affected rooms was starting to get worse. When they sent the estimate originally, the room looked completely normal, but after three months waiting for approval and more waiting for bids and building permits to come through, this room turned black.

The house has sat there for a year without gutters as the tree pulled them off both sides of the house. The construction team did an air quality test, the plan then was to do demolition and remediation on this portion of the house and the roof at the same time, but the results of the air quality test would quickly change those plans. It came back toxic, halting work entirely before it could even start. The house is not safe to enter and is a health risk to the construction team if they do not do this first due to the severity of the mold. A supplemental claim order was written and then sent into our insurance.

Our insurance had promised us for a year that we had coverage and previsions put in place in case more damage occurred, yet when this extra damage occurred we were told that we only had 5k in mold damage coverage, and that we would have to then pay for it - a grand total of 33 thousand dollars. Our insurance sat on this supplemental claim order for three weeks before giving us our first denial stamp.

We have been in temporary housing since October 25th 2024, but our coverage via insurance ends March 25th 2026. With this project being paused to this degree, meeting that time frame is impossible, leaving us with nowhere to go once our coverage runs dry.

We just want to return home, to feel safe again, to rest and recover from the trauma of having our house destroyed and being at the hands of mercy by our insurance. This has been a nightmare of a year and most days it feels like there is no end in sight for us, but we still keep fighting.

We have been in touch with local legal services, a handful of volunteer organizations and plan on reaching out to more, and working with local producers to get a few benefit shows up and running. Our goal above all is to figure out a way to get the basement demolition and remediation properly done so that the house is safe enough for the construction team to continue work, so that we can return home. If not, we may be looking into selling as is or filing personal bankruptcy.

Deloris’s Statement -

The impact of Helene is so convoluted for me. Having lost so many loved ones in the years prior, then trying to survive my own health complications on top of this. I'm a new widow, I lost my husband July 2021. I had already been struggling to try to maintain the house with just the two of us. We had contemplated selling but it was too overwhelming to deal with while trying to process grief. We had scheduled a meeting with an estate seller and we had an appointment with them on December 7th 2023, when early that morning I suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, which has a one and four survival rate. While in the hospital, we found out that I have a rare form of cancer called epithelioid hemangioendothelioma and we thought it was in my brain. The stroke affected my vision, leaving me feeling vulnerable and overwhelmed. I was just cleared to drive four days prior to the storm. My first time driving was two days after the storm once i40 and i74 were cleared of flood water, getting us from our house to my daughters fiance’s parents house where we stayed for a month before getting into temporary housing.

We realized at 11pm on 9/26/24 that we should have evacuated yet, no where to go really. You tell yourself that it’s going to be fine… Gosh, this is hard.

Here it is October 2025. After months of hassling and haggling with the original construction company, our insurance, and our mortgage company, we were finally on our way to getting our home repaired. Wrong. Our insurance denied the change order for remediation. It felt devastating to get the call from insurance that this was denied and we only had 5k in coverage for it after a year of fighting.

Looking back at all the phone calls, the lies, the stop and starting, delays, gaslighting, it blows my mind. We had been told by our insurance agent that he had many Helene cases, but ours was the worst, and it is still sitting there with no work done to it.

The trauma on top of existing trauma is unspeakable. Sleep is impossible, over these many months I nap induced by benadryl and celestial teas. Pass out for a couple of hours to be awakened by Tess, our cat. Tess was in my bedroom when the tree fell into our house. Rain pouring in, insulation scattered all around. She hid in the corner under my bed, we didn’t know if she was even alive until a day later because we couldn’t find her. She is also still traumatized, and rarely sleeps more than a few hours herself. When we stayed with my daughter's fiance’s family, the only place we could put her was a storage shed for a month, which led to some separation anxiety. I'm grateful she’s still with us, and that they had space for us and her. The floods caused allergies never experienced by humans or animals before, vet visits and prescriptions for her have been needed frequently.

I have been postponing a pet scan for a year because I am scared that the stress has caused my cancer to spread and I don't know if I can handle knowing, and the cost. I still have bills from my hospital stay in 2023.

How does a 70 year old stroke survivor who is partially blind even attempt to get 33k dollars? To see the destruction by the back seat of a car with my vision, as it has worsened due to the stress, I wish people could see what I have seen.

In 2013, I was convinced by my doctor to get a shingles vaccine. It unfortunately triggered internal shingles, which comes and goes with flare ups. Fast forward to my brother's death in 2015. I knew he wasn’t well, but I had no idea how ill he was being a vet. I was then diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2016, the doctors told me it was from unprocessed grief. My brother was my only sibling and my best friend. My grandma taught me to make a chain stitch at the age of 5, over the years I taught myself to crochet, mainly making granny square blankets for friends and family. I learned if I was quiet and still I could crochet pain free even with internal shingles and fibromyalgia. So, I began to crochet a lot more frequently, basically 24/7, making things for the home and family. It was therapeutic and calming for me.

Once I had the stroke, I feared I would not be able to crochet due to my vision. An occupational therapist at the hospital told me that I had cell memory and could probably still crochet with proper lighting and patience. She was right! So even though I am partially blind, I can still crochet most things. It gives me focus and a creative outlet.

The oak tree fell into my completed projects. We had started an Etsy page to list my work for additional income and even started to do vending events in town, but what finished work I had was crushed on impact. One item sold a few days after the storm and we had to refund it, as we couldn’t even get to it. No word yet from our insurance about reimbursement for all the shawls, ponchos, wraps, amigurumi, hats, scarfs, pot holders, and more. I don’t even know if these were thrown out or not a year later, it feels like my art is not valued by the company that took inventory of our contents, and my insurance. The tree fell right into a garment rack with 30 completed ponchos, now gone. They were not on the non-salvage list, and I got no answer when I asked about them. Totes full of finished shawls,and so much yarn waiting to be used, gone. It was my only source of additional income, and while it mainly keeps me focused, calm, and helps me feel useful, it’s not just crochet. It saved my life.

I want to thank my daughters' friends who have donated yarn to me. It has kept me busy and allowed me to create during this time.

So here we are, a week after getting the denial, over a year has passed since the storm and we are no closer to an outcome than when we first filed the original claim. We just want to go home.

Deloris's daughters statement (Some of you know her as Sally, others may know her by her clown/stage name. Sally is a nickname her grandmother gave her that she started going by shortly after her dad passed, but however you may know her, she's my daughter and this is her story in this) -

The evening before the storm, I lay awake tracking the storm via radars. I didn’t sleep at all, and at one point I got up and made a go bag. “Just in case, prepare for the worst and hope for the best” I tried to reassure myself. Little did I know, come about 8am, the worst could come.

We still had power in the early morning when my fiance awoke for work, who mind you I talked out of going to work, so I decided to get up and make a big batch of pancakes (so glad I did, we ate off those pancakes the first two days). After eating, we moved from our bedroom into the basement living room to try to get some extra sleep. As we lay there, the sounds of trees falling start crashing around us. It is a sound like no other, you feel it in every fiber of your being and your body reacts in an almost primal way. We decided to try and move some stuff around in the garage to pull my fiance’s car in, just in case a tree happened to fall and hit his car. What tree would come to hit however would be far more damaging that we could possibly imagine.

My partner was out trying to move the cars around to get them to both fit in the garage, my anxiety from hearing the storm at this point was ramping up so I sat down as I started to feel dizzy and all of a sudden I saw him start to run towards me. I don’t understand why there is so much panic in his body language and eyes, but then I heard it, and within a second, I felt it. It is a sound that kept me up at night, that every cell in my body will always remember.

When I talk to people about being inside our house when the tree hit, many ask what it sounded like, and well, it sounds like everything breaking. No, not just your house, but your safety, your belongings, your savings, your life, and your soul shattering. It's years of memories that crumbled on impact, and it’s your body wanting you to run.

I couldn’t look at the damage when it happened. I asked my partner to take a photo of the back bedroom where the tree fell and it took me a few days to be able to look at that photo. It was my dad's room who passed in 2021. We had left his room the exact same way he had left it. The tree’s branches also greatly impacted Mom’s room, the hallway, and both bathrooms. The smell of wet installation filled the house, rain came in from the cracked open roof and filled the rooms, soaking them so much that it was raining as hard in our garage as it was outside.

Our neighbors kindly told us to come over that morning, that they had an extra bedroom to stay in for the time being, another neighbor cooked us spaghetti dinner that night with their generator. Two days later the highways had cleared up enough for us to make it across town to my fiance’s parents house, where we stayed for a month until our insured got temporary housing squared away and we found a place gracious enough to allow us to have an extended stay. We didn't know, however, that we would still be in temporary housing today.

While staying at my partner's family's house, we went to the house several times to get out and save what belongings we needed and could. Photographs, important documents,clothing, jewelry, my sewing machine, art supplies, costumes. I'm an artist, both on paper and on a stage, it is my job and these items keep me employed and fed. I am still to this day trying to get the musky wet installation smell out of some clothes, and I spent the early part of this year trying to get mold and bad smells out of my costumes.

We started to see some progress, the ball started moving when the construction team started the demolition. Seeing half the house stripped to the studs and empty was nostalgic in a way. My dad built his room, and the garage underneath. Seeing it so bare like that reminded me of how it looked when we first moved in, or when Dad was doing construction work. Under the drywall on the studs was his handwriting, a little sliver or hope and reminders that he is still with us, even if all his belongings and room got destroyed.

Before the storm, I had many streams of income as I was selling my late uncles NASCAR collection on ebay, selling and shipping art and taking art commissions, even taking sewing commissions. The storms damage halted all of this completely, our printer got smashed, my shipping supplies got soaked, I lost a lot of sewing supplies and even parts of my uncles collection was destroyed, and with my costumes in no state to be worn until I could clean them properly, I was left with little to no income revenues. Once my costumes had been cleaned, I could perform again, but another hurtle arose once I realized that the space I had in where we are living temporarily was much smaller than the studio space I had set up at home to both sew and dance in. This made rehearsing and making new choreography very difficult. And while I had rescued my sewing machine, I lost a great deal of fabric and other supplies, as well as no longer having space to sew. I felt absolutely lost, trying to get both our insurance and the original construction team to understand that this put me out of work was difficult, it felt like no one was listening. My best friend was able to get me a job at the hotel she manages, which has been a great help to me both mentally and to have steady income again. However, it is still not enough to pay for what we need to get our house fixed.

The health effects of this stress have been difficult to navigate. I deal with chronic pain due to a spine condition I was born with, we had our house set up and accessible for me to navigate even on my worst pain days. I had proper, comfortable, and supportive seating - the temporary housing lacks this. This space is set up to be a vacation rental, not for long term living. All the seating here is not supportive for my spine and even causes my sciatica to flare, so I’ve resorted to spending most of my time doing at home activities in bed, which is not very good for my back. My hair is rapidly turning grey, and I have had two teeth break from the stress resulting in expensive emergency dental care that I had to get a loan for.

Things were starting to look up once the insurance finally approved reconstruction. We felt hope for the first time in a long time, we celebrated, we started to make plans on how to redecorate and what furniture to look at, and my partner even proposed! I was looking at fabric and dress patterns to make my wedding dress, we were talking about venues and making early plans because we wanted to set the date for next year once we got settled into our new house- then the denial and halt of all work came. It felt like everything crumbled around me again. I am so grateful for my partner through all of this, for without him I feel like I would have already given up, but he, and my mother as well, give me the strength to keep pushing on. I don’t want to give up on our house, but we need help in order to not lose it.