Partial Transcript: Just our topography. We’re rivers surrounded by mountains so when we get massive amounts of rainfall it has nowhere to go but up. We’re not like the coastal regions where the floodwaters can spread. It gets deep quick is our topographical problem.
To add to that, the steepness of our slopes in the mountainous areas, we go from steep slopes to flat areas around the rivers so that really creates vulnerability. The high velocities of the water coming off the mountains create a lot of damage too. You saw the pictures of the mudslides and things like that.
Another way to look at it is just imagine some big bowls. You put a storm into the bowl. As you tip that bowl there is only one way for the water to come out of that bowl. If you think about the big bowls we’ve got is the upper regions of the French Broad River here in Henderson County point down to ward Asheville. The Swannanoa Watershed, the great song we heard, starts in Black Mountain points towards Asheville. Where do they meet? Biltmore Village. And then keeps going down, goes all the way across into Tennessee as well. You think of every drop of water that’s falling in Henderson County a lot of Buncome County, all come together really being directed towards - where do we all like to live? – right along the river.
The other problem we’ve got, in addition to the French Broad, is the Green River. Which is on the other side of the continental divide. The headwaters are here also. So as that’s going down it starts narrowing into gorges. This is what happens with the headwaters of the Broad, what we call the Rocky Broad, they’re in narrow gorges, so then you have nowhere for that water to go. That’s where some of the worst damage here in Henderson County occurred is in those gorges around Green River as it flows along the Henderson Polk line and the headwaters of the Broad in the Bat Cave, Chimney Rock area.
You don’t have to go as far back as 1916 to remember the flood back in Hickory Nut Gorge as well too. That was not nearly as big of a storm back in the 70’s (77?) basically scoured out that whole Hickory Nut Gorge again.
Partial Transcript: Ready for your history lesson? On July 5th and 6th of 1916, a category 3 hurricane hit the Gulf Coast of Alabama and Florida. This was the earliest major hurricane to make landfall until the 1957, I believe. A few days later July 7th and 8th the weekend storm dropped heavy rainfall over the foothills and mountains of North Carolina. Normal rains, our normal summer rains, continued every day from July 9th to July 14th, and on July 14th a category 2 hurricanes made landfall along South Carolina’s coast passing over Charleston. So on July 15th and 16th, this system reached the North Carolina Mountains, what local folks call the tail-end of the hurricane, the tail-end of the tropical storm. So it now had been raining for 10 days, 10 days in a row. On July 15th in Henderson County, 10 inches of rain fell in less than 12 hours. Now the problem was that the rivers were already at flood stage, as we have every summer, every spring, every fall… we have the rivers already at flood stage. From the first tail-end of the hurricane and then from the normal - what we call normal - heavy summer rains for those continuous days. So all the rivers were already at flood stage so when the tail-end of that tropical storm from SC hit, 80-90% of that rainfall became runoff. Such an enormous amount of water never going entering the ground. And immediately flowing into the waterways and streams and rivers… just couldn’t hold it. So that’s when we have the mountain slides and the worst damage is from the gorge areas from the Rocky Broad and Green River where the mountain slides just fell. They said it started at the top of the mountains and came down. So the only people that escaped according to the newspaper and reports that I read, were the people that still had their homes in the coves and hollows. Because if you had moved out of those coves and hollows and you were living on the bottoms or tops or sides of those mountains, you were gone. Just washed away. And that’s not to mention along the French Broad because see that’s a more fertile valley, that’s going to spread out. You can picture the Nile – guys correct me if I’m wrong - you know how the Nile will keep freshening that soil. But along the Rocky Broad and the Green River where those slides kept coming down, it just destroyed it. That topsoil never came back, it didn’t replenish that. It’s gone, it’s still gone. You can’t farm down there anymore.
We live in some of the oldest mountains in the world here in Appalachians. They’re very old rock that is also very smooth. It takes thousands of years for this top soil to develop like you’re talking about. It’s usually held in place by trees and things. But when you put this much water in you can just imagine that it’s like putting flour into a frying pan. As long as there is just no liquid in that, it’ll probably stay in there pretty well. But just imagine now putting water underneath that and tilting it over, then all that flour then as its lubricated by that water just comes right off that frying pan. That’s what our rocks are like here in the mountains. And when you don’t live in one of these protected hollows, you’re right on the edge of that. And if your housed is built on the flour, you’re going right down with the flour.
Partial Transcript: We didn’t have that much deforestation in the Rocky Broad or in the Green River area. Most of the logging occurred in the North Mills River.
Especially in the North Mills River section, it was not only the deforestation but remember how you got a lot those logs to market at that time. You had these big chain booms across the river. They would cut the trees, put them in the river, wait til they had enough to float them down all together. Well, the best time to do that was in July when the regular rains came. So they had all these trees harvested behind their chain booms, now here’s the flood coming, right? One chain breaks after another. So it's not only the force of the water but these amazing pictures you’re seeing down along the river in Nashville. You had these huge battering rams coming in a wiping out things. We had amazing hydropower that was powering some of the best public transportation systems in the nation. We had trolley car systems. Trolley car garages completely wiped out, the hydro dams… you can see all these huge logs getting there. It was a very efficient transportation system for the logs. Unfortunately, by the time they stopped, they were down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mentioning the hydroelectric dams. There were only a handful of dams that survived the flood – I never did get an exact number – but the one in Henderson County survived the number 2 dam on the Big Hungry. The one they’re getting ready to take down now. That is the only dam that survived the flood of 1916 so therefore Henderson County did not have the extensive loss of electrical power that some of the other counties did. That number 2 dam on the Big Hungry withstood the flood in 1916. There wasn’t a lot of deforestation along the Big Hungry.
Looking at it from a stormwater standpoint, if you do go out and remove vegetation you’re certainly going to increase that runoff. Knowing the practices that are in place today are not the practices that were in place in 1916. Now, if a developer goes out and develops a site or loggers go in, they have mitigation measures they go out and take better care of things. But in 1916 there were no rules and regulations pertaining to that so they’d go out and cut what trees they could and leave that area bare. So that water would certainly run off a lot quicker than it would with that vegetation stage there.
I can remember my grandfather telling me that after the flood there were so many gullies that were washed out – and they were so deep that when they had an old junk car or anything like that, they would run that old junk car into the gully. They’d try to fill it full of trash. They’d use anything to fill those gullies up so they’d have more level land, more useful land. So there so much stuff buried in this county. If you go to digging, there ain’t no telling what you’ll find.
Partial Transcript: According to the chief engineer of the state highway commission in Nashville who had to walk everywhere, he was walking: You couldn’t…. all the bridges and all the train trestles were washed away… and the waters were at flood stage, you couldn’t get a horse across so you just had to walk to survey the damage. He said that the greater part of the damage was mountain slides and he guessed he saw the effects of more than 300 just walking through. So I have no idea of the actual total.
But when you talk about flooding, to give you an example, the French Broad River crested at an estimated 21 feet, some 17 feet above flood stage. The average width of the French Broad near Asheville in 1916 was 381 feet and during the flood it was 1,300 feet across. So we have had nothing like that since then.
There’s a lot of great descriptions on this from W. S. Fallis with the Highway Commission. They talk about the Rivers sounding like a torrent of ocean water coming with huge waves crashing against the rocks. One of the things Mr. Fallis saw was the torrent excavated all the dirt from around an 18-foot well leaving the well high and dry above the surrounding ground with the stone wall still intact. Instead of a well it’s now a stone column set in the midst of a boulder stream field.
In Transylvania County, a 60-foot long bolder weighing 900 tons slid off the mountain and was transported along the Toxaway River for more than half a mile. It’s still sitting in the river.
All the telegraphs were out, all the depots were flooded, but just to give you an example from Asheville, this is the last teletype received out of Asheville:
Asheville and Biltmore are flooded. The water is up to the ceiling in the depot. It is 6 feet deep in Dr. Elias’ house and in Biltmore. It is in All Souls Church. It is in the hospital. The beds are floating, the patients are drowning. The tannery is washed away. Bridges are gone. Captain Lipe and some of the nurses are drowned at Biltmore. Other people are up in trees surrounded by water and they can’t get them out of the river. The Swannanoa is a mile wide. Box cars are floating down the French Broad. All the lakes at Hendersonville have broken.
That was the last teletype. Dr. Morris had just bought Chimney Rock and he has some fantastic descriptions that we probably don’t have time to read here. But it’s just unbelievable. He said that the Rocky Broad was like an ocean tide. He said it sounded like an ocean tide coming down. And how people were fleeing.
We don’t know how many people died. Because the bodies washed away. They never did get an exact number of deaths. We confirmed 8 just in the Bat Cave area but we don’t know in the other sections. For example, we’ve got a grave of a guy that lived down toward Bat Cave and Middlefork whose body was found down towards South Mills Gap Road in Edneyville. It’s hard to imagine.
I do have the estimates from a contemporary report by the Federal Government stated that property damage at that time was $22 million. Adjusted for inflation if it happened in 2007 it would be $430 million. A Geologist at UCH said, “Floods are never a one-time event, what was flooded once will eventually be flooded again. The area’s population is 3 times larger than it was in 1916. The next 1916-type flood could produce 10 times more death and destruction than the first one.”
You know, I think the point about the landslides is really a critical one to know. That’s actually the larger danger when we have these very heavy rains. We think about the waters coming up but it’s really the mountainsides coming down that really catch people unaware. Dr. Rick Wooten, who is our state geologist out here in the west. He and his team have actually mapped most of Western North Carolina and you can see these scars. Unfortunately, where landslides have happened in the past it's likely to happen again. But we tend to be building on these scars. So there is the larger danger for loss of life and property related to where the landslides are than where we know the flood plains are as well.
Well, one of the things that worries me, or anybody that’s lived in Hendersonville all their life, is where they’ve built up on Spartanburg highway to add businesses. Built both sides up and there’s several places in the county that they’re doing that where flooding occurs. And wondering what the consequences are going to be where they’ve redirected the water and how the effects are going to come about when it does happen again.
We forget that all the land around Hendersonville, it’s on a hill, and it's surrounded by what local folk call swamps, it’s more like bogs. In this flood, those were lakes. Where the fresh market and all sits, wasn’t it 17 feet deep? 17-18 feet deep. You’re not just talking about the rivers; you’re talking about all the tributaries that go into those rivers. That’s why Hendersonville was a hill in the middle of a lake. There’s a reason they built Four Seasons Blvd as high up as they did because in a normal heavy summer rain you’re couldn’t drive down 7th Avenue. All of that area, if you look at Patton Park, 25, you go all around Valley Hill… all that is boggy land area. That became a lake when all those streams fill up with water.
As a child, in a normal heavy rain, you couldn’t get into Hendersonville no matter where you lived in the county.
One point that we don’t talk about much here in the mountains… we’re bounded by these different valleys and hills and it really causes what’s called microclimates. In Asheville we’re really protected from a lot of the rain, even in the 2004 flood we did not get a lot of rain. We only get about 40 inches of rain in Asheville, here in Hendersonville you get about 65-70 inches of rain and by the time you get to Brevard you get a little over 100 inches of rain. So just the way the mountains focus the rain, that when these storms come, Transylvania and Henderson County, you’re getting a lot more than we’re getting in Asheville. Now we are downstream from you, so what you get we do receive.
Partial Transcript: My great-grandfather who lived in Chimney Rock got letters from a man named Justice further down from Rutherford County who with a group of citizens got stuff together and sent it up by wagon. And asked him to distribute it. Also in Bat Cave there was a group of episcopal nuns who had a house there and my grandfather on the other side wrote a letter to his brother - that we still have copies of – he said that at one point 33 people were living with those nuns and that the biggest problem was finding food because everything had to be brought in and carried by hand because you couldn’t use horses or anything.
Partial Transcript: The state relief aid out of Raleigh (stepped in) and Norfolk Southern built those train trestles back fast at great cost. Norfolk Southern was the greatest financial loser because they lost everything. That was your primary means of transportation. Raleigh couldn’t get the relief supplies here until Norfolk Southern had rebuilt those railroad lines and train trestles. There’s huge editorials at the time about the great debt of gratitude that the people of Western North Carolina felt towards Norfolk Southern and how they still hold them near to their hearts. If it wasn’t for NFS, they wouldn’t have gotten the supplies in to get them through the winter… it was state relief aid is what it was, because all the crops were gone. The vast majority of people in Henderson County were self-sustaining Appalachian mountain farmers. That’s what they did. That was their primary income. At this time in 1916 about 75% of the people were self-sustaining mountain farmers. So you’ve lost your crops and you’re in bad shape.
Partial Transcript: I talked to a friend of mine a while back and he was telling me about his grandfather talking about canoeing from about where Byers sheet metal is on Dana Road now to Duncan Hill to some friends and family who lived up on Duncan Hill to get eggs and chickens. That was the only way that they could get any food was by canoe and that wasn’t that far from the depot… which all that was pretty well wiped out.
Churches stepped in too. Silver Creek Baptist took in those people down in the Green River Gorge and the Brights Creek section where some of my ancestors lived. They actually lived at Silver Creek Baptist for a while, so some of these churches were opening up their doors too. That was a huge help.
Partial Transcript: They quit farming in some of those areas and moved out. All the people moved out of the Brights Creek area, they all moved out. You couldn’t farm there anymore. All the people moved out of the cove. You couldn’t farm down there anymore. The Green River Cove was one of the richest agricultural areas at that time, and you can’t farm there anymore. Not to make a profit. My great-grandfather had to become a sharecropper. All they could do was sell their timber rights. The land was worthless for farming.
Partial Transcript: It doesn’t take that long for the waters to recede, but just as you were talking about these huge ravines and as she’s mentioning all the top soil was gone. So as you start thinking about getting to here, it just became really impossible. Lots of newspaper articles talk about how there was no way in and out of the mountains. Every major road and bridge was gone. So even though the waters receded there were these big canyons that there was just no way to get across.
Partial Transcript: We do have the records and the 1916 flood is the flood of record. 1896 was there. We’ve had major floods in this region 1928, 1945, 1977, late 90’s, 2004. And by government regulations, everybody hears about the 100-year floodplain, right? That’s the 1% chance. We actually have 100-year floods about every 20 years here. We can tell by the record that the severity and frequency of storms is increasing as well too. So we just had these two hurricanes that followed one another on top of a lot of rain. We almost had that in 2004, we did have two tracking hurricanes but fortunately it was parked over one watershed area. We just missed one this year. What SC received in October, we were very close to getting that here. We just missed that one. That’s going to keep happening. That’s something we can’t control, that’s Mother Nature at work.
To add to what Jim mentioned, in 1916 in Swannanoa and Biltmore village the volume of water going through there was roughly 23,000 cubic feet per second, in 2004 it was 13,000 cubic feet per second. So a little over half of what it was in 1916. How many folks were here in 2004? I was, I remember what the Swannanoa looked like. I worked at the Dept. of Transportation. I remember the French Broad coming through Marshall. Just the magnitude of these floods. Jim mentioned it’s going to happen again. What we’re trying to do is get more prepared for that. In Asheville we have ordinances in place, as Henderson County does and most jurisdictions, and we’re requiring for new developments, new homes, to be built two feet above the base flood elevation, the 100-year flood plain that Jim mentioned earlier. When they come in we’re requiring them to construct finished floors two feet above that. We have storm water ordinances in place out there too.
You mentioned the dam at Northfork. The water resources folks up there, what they actually did was enact an emergency action plan, a flood operations plan. When they’re predicting these flood events. They start dropping that reservoir. Early October this year, we were looking at potentially getting 15” of rainfall and that certainly had everybody in public works and water resources flagged and we were certainly in tuned to what was happening. They started lowering that reservoir early. Really what that did was let that water out and increase the volume of storage there. Very helpful for the floods. Those reservoirs do reach capacity too. So if we had 20” of rain, that area would certainly be flooded.
Duke Energy regulates today the flow in and out of the Green River – the same way you were describing – with their dam on the green river. Duke regulates the control of how much water is flowing back and forth. But I don’t know what they would do in a situation of that much rain… how much control that would have over that particular area.
We have the same flood level, the two-foot above based flood elevation, but if we get this size magnitude storm again and the sides of the mountains come crashing down into the rivers, its going to clean it all off. There’s no stopping that. We as humans can’t overcome that. We can’t say no development in that area either because people own the land and they depend on it. So, I don’t want to get ahead because you have this question coming up, but I would love to see less – not even so much as the problems we have here but the coastal development – because those things just fall off into the ocean and they’re going to keep doing that. I wish all of North Carolina was a national seashore and no one lived there, but we have the same problem here and you can’t say that.
Partial Transcript: Well, we’re worse off because, you said, three times the population? That’s 3x as many people affected. There is more impervious surface here. More roads, more rooftops. That channels that water further. It increases the velocity of the moving water.
Better off, at least we’re aware of that hazard. We’ve tried to prepare for it. The county has a hazard mitigation plan. We’ve looked at what do we do on that bad day. We’ve built our transportation systems, and our hospitals and our emergency services facilities so that they’re away from that stuff. If Hendersonville is surrounded by a mile of water, you can’t get away from that.
I thought it was more like 10x the population. But also where the population is living. How many natives in 1916 were living on ridgetops or mountain faces? I would venture to guess very few. No one was building McMansions on the mountains like they are today. The % of the population that’s in danger, I would imagine, is a lot higher.
Well, local people never build on top of mountains, I’ll guarantee you that. Every local person I know drives down the road and goes, “I wonder when that house is coming down.” Just from the local perspective of our local population, they tend to know a little bit better. Like my family, they moved out of Brights Creek and then what has gone in there but a gated community with a Tom Fazio golf course. Those are very expensive homes down there, well there’s a reason why local people weren’t living there. The same thing along Green River Cove, even the North Pacolet, like I was talking about in the Mountain Page area. The head waters of the North Pacolet are above Lake Jocasse. Over there in Mount Page which is Henderson County. That dam breaks at Lake Jose and that water is going down the side of that mountain and look and see who has the homes along there, it’s not the local people. I went in 2004 with the Saluda volunteer fire department to ask people to leave those areas. To please pack up and move and get out of the Green River Cove, to get off the sides of the North Pacolet. Not one of these people were local and they were rude and they said, “We’re not moving, we’re staying.” And the Saluda Fire Department said, well we’re not coming to rescue you. You’re on your own. We’ve warned you. We’ve told you of the dangers and if you don’t go, then you’re on your own.
Largest loss of life during 2004 flood
During the 2004 flood event, the largest loss of life was in Peaks Creek. Peaks Creek was a large landslide that came down there. One of the saddest stories was related to one of the second homes that are here. A lot of these homes are second homes. There was a couple that left Florida because of the hurricane that was coming; they decided to go to the mountains for safety from the hurricane. Unfortunately, they were he ones right in harms way as the large mudslide came through and 11 people lost their lives in Peaks Creek. History and Culture for those of us in the room that we can share those stories and appreciate the lessons that we’re learning. But a lot of times our neighbors in the mountains don’t have that kind of connection with the community that groups like this form. So when you start looking at trusted sources of information that governments can provide some of this information. But most of us rely on people sitting right next to us. People that we can share our culture with and get that deeper understanding. And the people that have second homes here and are here for only 3 months or for two weeks here and there don’t’ have that link to the community that we can build. So I think that demographic becomes very vulnerable to these kinds of events. They’re going to be the highest risk. They’re not going to be listening to this very good advice based on the history and culture of our mountains.
Partial Transcript: Well, you can find it in Buncombe County. I’m very proud that our group has put together the multi-hazard risk tool for Buncombe County and the City of Asheville. Publicly available, you can go online find the flood information, the steep slopes, the landslide, where your fire hazard is.
So Henderson County has the information. Macon County, _______ County, one other… Haywood County.
I think there was 8 counties.
It’s Sometimes politics. You know, if you put out hazard maps sometimes people view that as hurting their property value and that is a conversation that goes on. I think in Buncombe County, the County decided that transparency is the best way to move ahead. But that’s not necessarily the way everyone things here in the mountains.
To add what Jim mentioned there. I know the state is working on some multi-hazard tools also. They have a website, a great tool that I know Todd and I both use a lot. It’s a flood risk information system. You can actually go and click on your property and pull up information about your specific property if you’re in the flood zone. They’re working on the steep slopes side too, the slides and all. That’s an estate level. But talking about Asheville, we do have a steep slopes ordinance. Folks come in and look at developing on that piece of property that is over - typically that triggers at 22/20 is when that triggers for us – our development services staff review that. Actually, there is a formula in place that allows so much grading, so much disturbance to take place. So we are looking at things like that. But it is a political button that gets folks' attention when you’re talking about property rights and a lot of different things there. That’s something that our council has decided to pursue.
Well I’ve actually been helping a friend who lives in Travelers Rest in Greenville county. If you go to sell property for somebody to build on now… If their only access to that property is crossing a flood plain or a river, they are no longer allowed to build on that property unless they’ve got another access not crossing a flood plain to that property. So it would hurt a lot of land owners trying to sell but it will also protect the next person trying to buy.
Partial Transcript: I do know the Asheville Board of Realtors has been proactive. They actually train all their realtors on this tool in Buncombe County. You can pull up the property and get a direct reading on what the risk is associated with that.
The steep slopes: is it strictly the angle or is it the makeup of the mountain too?
The first trigger is elevation. Then it looks at the slope. That’s how the percentage is based. I’m definitely not an expert on how we do that. But they look at the threshold of 22-20 that triggers it, and then they look at the grade of the slope and that’s what the next trigger would be.
The Asheville information is online. Ashevillenc.gov
Yeah and anywhere in Buncombe County, you can access any piece of property within the county.
Partial Transcript: It’s the elevation above sea level. If you look at the contours on the maps, its that elevation. Our GIS system has different topography lines. It’s just the elevation mark is what the trigger is.
I don’t know the answer to the slope percentage. The trigger is 2220. There is a formula based on the slope percentage.
Yeah there is different cutoffs for degree. So there’s a 20, 30 and 45% are the different ones that are in the different ordinances.
Yeah, when we had Rick Wooten in here, he said that 22% was the threshold when you begin to have issues. 22% slope and 4” of rain within several hours, you’re almost guaranteed to have a mudslide or a rockslide.
The parking lot at First Baptist Church is at 2220 to give you an idea what the elevation is at 2220.
Partial Transcript: When you’re looking at Asheville and specifically Biltmore Village. Biltmore Village is the bottom of that bowl Jim described earlier. What we see when Swannanoa rises, you get some backwater effects too. Maybe the river’s not jumped the bank, but you see localized flooding on the side streets and that’s due to the backup from the river. That’s a big issue that we deal with often. Jim and I were talking earlier but before the meeting, yesterday, we have some localized flooding. Swannanoa River Road was closed… as was ____ Road above the soccer complex. we actually had water on the four fields yesterday. I was driving by there before 8 o’clock yesterday to see what flooding we had. There was water on those fields. In an urban setting, there is a lot of closed system drainage pipes. And we see fall leaves that clogs up the drains and we have to go take care of that too. So there are a lot of factors. We’re always looking to prevent that. But we maintain over 400 miles in the city, so it's tough to do it all.
In a denser area, every roadway, every tile changes the way the floodway works. Every structure, every fence, changes the way the velocity flows. The tighter we are shoulder to shoulder, the more change you get with the flow.
If you look at what the city has done, in Asheville, especially since 2004 floods, they’ve bought out a lot of higher-risk properties along the Swanannoa to keep those people out of harm’s way. If you go to the new Walmart on Tunnel Road, just walk down below going down to the river. You’ll see this amazing green space and places where it really keeps that water from coming up into that area. City ordinances have really helped make that area less vulnerable. They’ve built what they call adaptive capacity. Go to Biltmore Village and go shopping at the new Chico’s or go to the new hotel. All of those are base floor elevation, two foot above the flood. The parking underneath those is where its going to flood, but you can move cars. The way the city ordinance is, you open up either end of those parking garages so the water flows through those too. So, it still looks like a great historic place, but with the city ordinances You’ve built a lot of adaptive capacity there.
Partial Transcript: Lesson one is that we are vulnerable. Those tropical storms can hit us and sit on us and drown us.
Certainly, to add to that, the city has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers talking about the vulnerabilities. Realizing that it’s not a question of IF it’s going to flood, we know the floods will be coming. We’re trying to take proactive measures to try to get ahead of that and do some mitigation. We’re proud of the fact that we’ve partnered with the Corps of Engineers on the Swannanoa study, looking at various projects through the basin, and are a step closer. So we’re hoping that we’ll be out with some feasibility projects come hopefully this time next year. Looking at simple projects like removing the flood plain field that’s placed in front of Zoe’s Kitchen at Biltmore Avenue Bridge. Lake Craig project, we’ve got an existing structure up there that we can retrofit to be a flood control project. We’re talking to the folks at Warren Wilson College about a potential peak flow structure on their property. So several things that’s in the works there pertaining to the Swannanoa.
I think the one thing we really can do is - we can’t control when these next big storms come, we know that they’re going to come. We also probably as groups of people don’t learn as much from scientific data that we like to talk about as much as the storytelling and narrative that’s happening here tonight. So if nothing else from an evening like this evening, to realize that when these big storms come, that the danger is not just coming from the water coming up but it’s coming from the mountainsides coming down. If we can become better-educated citizens about where that’s more likely to happen in ways that we can control where we live and where we work to keep ourselves safe – those are things within our control. I think if we can learn from the power of the narrative to build our history here again so that we don’t suffer like 1916 was, then evenings like this evening are just so powerful.
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I’ve got a question of my own. With all the building and stuff that’s going on, have there been any kind of studies showing how the buildings have changed the flow of water…
Fortunately, FEMA just redid the flood maps in 2008. So what’s happened in the last 7 years now isn’t reflected, but we were working with 1976 maps before so the data is much better and the flood plain is much more accurately mapped than it once was. All those changes up to that point have at least been considered.
It is accessible to the public through FEMAs website; we have it on our website on our county GIS as a layer. We’ve got the paper maps in the office.
One thing too, Todd I know talking about Buncombe County, they’re looking at beginning the remapping in 2017. I’m not sure what Henderson County is looking at that but I imagine it would be pretty close to that same time frame. Our maps were adopted in 2010, so we’ve got some pretty good information there. The state is unique in the way that it can do the flood mapping itself, where a lot of other states have FEMA do that. Which is a good thing for the census.
Partial Transcript: I was a reporter at the paper and I had the assignment of Bat Cave after 2004 that was a fun experience. I was particularly concerned about this elderly couple who I had done some stories on before. Alma Avery and her husband, a black elderly couple. Where they lived is off Indian Road. To get off Indian Road to get to their house you’ve gotta cross the creek and the creek was so high that the bridge was underwater. The photographer and I had wading boots on and walked across that creek. We went to check on them. I had been to the Bat Cave fire department and they hadn’t heard from them. There wasn’t at that time anyone who lived further up on Indian Road where they lived. So we walked all the way up there, really concerned. Telling the Bat Cave guys that we’d report back to them. And we get up to their house and their wood stove’s going. They’re out there with a charcoal grill on the porch and they’re cooking. She tells me they’ve moved all their dairy products and meat to the spring house. She had refrigeration and all but they had no electricity so she moved everything out to the old spring house. They’re not worried about their supply of food because they can and freeze everything. The freezer stuff she said she was a little bit worried about if the power didn’t come back on soon. But they were grilling their supper and doing just fine and plenty of water and they had no problems at all. They were amazing.
I talked to the other old-timers when we had the blizzards, and they’re fine. Somebody said when we have a blizzard and we lose our power, we have to eat all our food cause it's going to go bad in the freezer. And this old timer looked at me and said, why would they say that? Why don’t they just put it out in the snow? You know, we can learn lessons from people if we just think about it a little bit.
Those same kind of preparations should be made for floods, for ice storms. We should all be better prepared for those kind of emergencies. We’re not because we’re used to running to Ingles and it's less than five miles away and getting what we need. But we should all be more prepared. Have a means to, you know, have a little garden, not everybody needs a cow and chickens but at least some way to supplement going to the grocery store.
Hopefully you’ve been listening to NOAA and about an El Nino year. It’s been a little rainy recently here, right? El Nino years it gets more moisture, like we’ve had, but it also gets colder. Moisture, colder. If this is going to be a winter that you might want to have more emergency supplies set aside, this would be a good one to do that.
Partial Transcript: In 1960, it snowed every Wednesday in the month of February. We didn’t go to school the entire month of February. The roads – once you have that much snow that keeps building and building at a certain point supplies aren’t getting in. Most of the stuff was being delivered by tractor trailer trucks to the grocery stores. They couldn’t get up and down the mountain roads. And as recently as 1960 they were dropping by air at the National Guard Armory basic food supplies for the people here in Henderson County. The planes were flying over and food was being dropped there at the National Guard Armory at East Flat Rock. You need to be prepared. We are in a mountain area, we’ve got mountain roads. How are these supplies getting in and out?
You need to have a backup heat source. In working at the Times News that was one of the biggest problems. Toby and these guys – he’s with the rescue squad. And heat for our elderly people. If they don’t have a backup heat source, you’ve got some serious problems. Having the backup heat sources won’t do any good if you don’t have the wood or the kerosene there. Because once you realize your power is gone, you may not be able to go get that wood or that kerosene at the store. So you’re really stuck.
I would also like to point out from my friends in the fire departments and rescue squad. You can report the elderly people that have to have that electric source for their oxygen and other things that they have to have. You can get some backup batteries and generators. But you really need to let your local fire department know you’re in that situation. You need to be on record. They have a list. They will check on those people that are on that list. Well they checked on my mom so I know they do that.
Well, that’s one of the great services that the county provides and it has made folks lazy and to not be prepared themselves. We offer shelters during ice storms. Each fire department and the rescue squad, we’ll pick folks up and take them to the shelters or for those that really have medical needs, take them to nursing homes – but that makes individuals not prepare on their own. In a perfect world, we shouldn’t need that assistance. That self-sustaining helps everyone.
And they really need to be focusing on those that are on oxygen and have medical needs – those lives that are really in danger when that power goes.
Partial Transcript: Each fire department preplans their dangers. In that area they’re certainly looking at flooding and rockslides and what happens when 64 and 74 are cut off. Just like city fire department preplans the dangerous plants and what chemicals are there that could cause problems, we do the same thing with natural hazards as well.
Partial Transcript: I was just thinking at the end of all of this, the words of Sir Winston Churchill about the Americans about: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, but only after they’ve tried everything else.”
If you could wave your magic wands to better protect the people who live here, what would you ask for to make our community safer, healthier, happier, more sustainable? What rules might be in place that would ensure the homes up above me won’t be sliding off the mountain and visiting me in July?
We wouldn’t build in the dangerous places, we wouldn’t live in these dangerous places. The coast, the mountainous rivers, we wouldn’t live there. All the sprawl that we do, we wouldn’t be in some of these areas – with a magic wand, we might not populate this area, but better decision making as a whole.
A little common sense goes a long way – and sometimes you just can’t give common sense. The things that you can do is tell people: first of all, think about where you’re at. Second of all, think about what you would do. Third of all, don’t panic – think it through.
We had a flood damage reduction task force that the city and county put together after 2004 and I think that the one message that came out of that task force to me is: we all live in the same watershed and we need to share responsibility for that watershed. No matter where you live, you’re part of this system, whether you’re upstream or downstream. The power of resiliency is us. We can’t control these large storms, but we can control where we live, how we get along with everybody else that shares the watershed with us. I think sometimes in our modern society we’ve gotten away from the cove or the hollow that we live in. That our coves and hollows are a little bit larger. But we do owe a responsibility to one another in this watershed. Only together can we find these solutions. There’s no one right answer – but as long as we care about the rest of the people in the watershed, we can find better ways of doing it.
We all live downstream.
That is our logo at the city of Asheville, we do all live downstream. And I live in Madison County so I live downstream from everybody. We’re dealt the hand we’re dealt. We do have folks that have built in the flood zones. I guess the perfect one - From my standpoint would be able to implement some of these project we’re working on. We’re working now in the city of Asheville and Buncombe County, would be even broadening that and reaching out and partnering with Henderson County and looking at what flood mitigation opportunities are there. To working with the Corps of Engineers, the State, there’s funds available out there. They’re very competitive to get. But if we can look for opportunities to mitigate the flood damage. Again, there is no stopping everything. But if could mitigate some of the damages, that would be a win-win scenario.
Are there any laws on the book? Is anyone thinking about laws on the book which would not allow a developer to come in and develop the side of a mountain? Which shouldn’t be lived on.
Well, there’s one law called the law of gravity – but that might be a little too late…
What I was going to say was, have we passed a ridge top ordinance?
There is a ridge top ordinance. We don’t have an ordinance that outright prohibits that. On the steep slopes, we reduce the allowed residential density by half. We also require their erosion control and stormwater permits at half an acre versus an acre of normal disturbed areas. So that the regulation. More scrutiny for building on those slopes.
That’s state law. Protected mountain ridge that limits building heights to 40 feet.
Yah can’t build big hotels on top of mountains.
Every time I drive down 191 leaving Hendersonville as if you’re going to Mills River, there is a development … but on the left, as you’re going out – every time I go by, I see homes on the tops and edges on the ridgeline – some of them have big, tall -what-, supporting part of the homes and I wonder when those are just going to slip down.
We’re just going to keep watching them… What he said, it's politics sometimes. It’s a political decision. It's up to the county commissioners. These guys just enforce what there is to enforce. To change those laws, that’s up to your governing bodies – you have to go through that. I don’t have anything except to be prepared. I think we can learn from the lessons of history – many time we don’t want to learn from the lessons of history. We think we with our modern technology are more powerful than Mother Nature.
Nature begs to differ.
Yeah, I’m sitting here waiting to see Fresh Market and Harris Teeter underwater. Because I’ve seen many times in my life where that’s a lake. It wasn’t 17’ lake like in 1916 but it was a lake.
You know what could stop that? All these little tributaries…. All these trees need to be gotten out of them and the water can move on out. If you look down all of them, there’s trees all laying down in the water and it backs the water up. That water can move on out of here.
The final chapter of the 1916 flood would be written by you – do you want to have this knowledge and incredible history – this legacy of a flood ridden area with mudslides and rockslides and rules that don’t necessarily match what the history is telling us. It’s up to you to write that chapter.
