A local reporter’s experience covering Western North Carolina in the wake of Helene

It’s hard to put into words what it’s like to pull up to where a family’s home once stood and see mounds and mounds of cracked, beige dirt.

To notice that a wooden, split-rail fence managed to withstand more than 20 feet of swift-moving floodwaters, yet not realize until later that the fence bordered the home’s driveway. To walk next door to a tiling warehouse, where men in white coveralls and muddy black boots are removing storm debris, and ask if there was a house next to their place of business.

And, when one answers in the affirmative, to have him walk you and your photographer to the spot where a family once laughed and cried and prayed together – all while knowing the tragic outcome of their story.

My job is to put these kinds of experiences into words. More than a week later, I’m still struggling to.

I tried to begin this piece – a brief description of my reporting in Asheville, North Carolina, as part of the USA TODAY Network’s Hurricane Helene coverage – in a light-hearted way. 

I thought about starting with how we in the Asheville Citizen-Times newsroom had to use gallon buckets to force-flush the toilets because there was no running water. About how bags of cat litter sat in the halls in case reporters needed to take them home to create a makeshift bathroom.

THE DRYE FAMILY: Asheville family – including 7-year-old – swept to deaths by Helene’s floodwaters

I thought about describing the lovely man I encountered as I traipsed around a homeless encampment, who was all too willing to show me where a tree fell on his tent and legs when Helene swept through Western North Carolina. His rebuilt camp is the tidiest I’ve ever seen – and my beat has taken me through quite a few.

But today, on an unseasonably warm Tuesday in late October, I wrote and rewrote the beginning of this piece. Because this afternoon – and the afternoon before it – my heart is heavy.

It’s heavy for the Dryes and Wiselys, two families who lost almost everyone to the floods, and the other Asheville survivors I spoke to. For the families who are still waiting to hear about loved ones.

For the homeless residents who told me they fear some of their acquaintances who perished in the storm will never be claimed by family because of their transient status. And for the Western North Carolina community as a whole, which is mourning the loss of homes and pets and landmarks and an art colony that disappeared entirely in mere hours.

As students, journalism hopefuls are taught to keep an arm’s length from stories and sources. Reporters must remain objective, professors stress, which means maintaining a certain level of detachment. If you care too much, your feelings might find their way into a piece and influence your ability to tell the story fairly.

But what this (well-intentioned) lesson leaves out is humanity.

How can one travel to natural disaster-ravaged areas, interview families who lost parents and siblings and children and grandparents, and not be impacted? 

THE WISELY FAMILY: 2 brothers killed in flood loved superheroes, cows. 21 Buncombe students still missing

How can a reporter spend hours at a barricade situation involving an 11-month-old girl and not feel emotional when they’re told a chaplain has been called to the hospital where the baby was rushed following a gunshot wound to her head? 

And how can journalists be expected to cover school shootings – as the Texas-based photographer I worked alongside in Asheville did in Uvalde in 2022 – and remain emotionless?

I don’t believe reporters can. And I also believe this is something those in the field have long known.

At the first newspaper I worked at, I had an editor who was decades into his career. He knew I was fresh out of college and hadn’t chosen the breaking news/public safety beat (which I’m so thankful I was assigned to because it’s now my specialty.) He knew that I’d write a lot of hard stories in my career.

So, one day, he offered me a piece of advice: The moment this stuff – the really tragic, heavy stories, he meant – stops getting to you, get out of the profession. Or, at the very least, take a long enough break to where you can feel the humanity of this again.

Eight or so years later, I remember those words like he spoke them yesterday. So, on days when my heart is heavy, I think it’s OK to feel this way.

Because what’s happening in Western North Carolina is heavy – and it will be for that community and those journalists for a while.

Isabel is an investigative reporter covering breaking news and public safety, with an eye toward some of Delaware’s most vulnerable: children, those struggling with addiction, and those with mental illness. She can be reached  at ihughes@delawareonline.com or via X at @izzihughes_