
Help my family and pets to get a place to live.❤️
Hi, my name is Jonathan Hernandez. I used to live with my family in Fletcher, but unfortunately on Friday, 27, 2024, we woke up like a regular day, but Hurricane Helene was already hitting us. Our small crate was starting to rise. My brother had to get up to get my dogs, my mini pigs, and my mini goat inside the house, thinking that the water was not going to get inside the house. But unfortunately, around 8:30, the water started going up and up. It didn’t stop. We were just looking outside, checking out how the water was going up. I had to get my car and my mom‘s car out to the street so that the water wouldn’t reach them, but I couldn’t get all of them out, so some of the cars stayed behind. I pushed them further up in the driveway so the water wouldn’t hit them, but that didn’t help at all. The water just wouldn't stop rising. At one point, we saw the water reach our back porch and my mom and I grabbed a cardboard because we didn’t have anything else. We put plastic wrap around the cardboard and drilled some screws on the cardboard to hold the water from coming in inside the house, but it didn’t help at all. The water was coming inside from the air vents under the house. I heard my mom crying. I tried to calm her down, telling her that everything was going to be OK. My little sister was up on the table, screaming, scared. We tried covering the air vents with anything that we had - towels, blankets, plastic, but it didn’t help at all. The water started to reach my knees. We were all scared. We just saw everything getting destroyed by the water. Our neighbor came to help us get out. He brought a kayak. I jumped out the window. I couldn’t open the door anymore. I put the window down and jumped out. He had the kayak ready. I took my sister, her cat, and her mini pig out first. Then she went with our neighbors in front of us. The water wasn’t hitting them because they’re up on a hill. Then I came back to get my mom, but at the same time, my other brother was getting the clothes from my little sister and my mom up high so the water wouldn’t reach them. My other brother was helping to take my mom and my pets out of the window and I was getting them from the other side into the kayak. We have a couple of pets. We have 8 shih tzus, a Great Dane, a Rottweiler, a blue terrier, 5 mini pigs, a mini goat, five cats, a sugar glider, two ferrets, and two birds. We were able to get all of them out. We put them in our van and our other car so they wouldn’t run away. We lost everything else that we had inside the house. Everything got flooded, destroyed, and contaminated by the sewer water that came out from the toilet. Now we don’t have a place to keep all our animals. My shop got flooded too. Everything in there got wet and muddy, 2 feet above the door from my shop. The cars that I had in there got destroyed by the hurricane. So it’s going to take me time to get my family a new place to live. Please, if you could help us out. Richard is looking for a place to live with land around Fletcher, Hendersonville, or Flat Rock. We are helping out by being volunteers at Be Love Asheville. Thank you for listening to my story, my family's story. If you guys could help us out, we would really, really appreciate it. Thank you, guys.
Organizer and beneficiary
Jonathan Hernandez
Organizer
Fletcher, NC
Gloria Hernandez
Beneficiary