One year later, Southwest Virginia town still recovering from Helene
Andrew Freiden visits Damascus a year after major flooding struck
DAMASCUS, Va. (WWBT) - One year ago, the remnants of Helene hit the mountains of North Carolina and Southwest Virginia hard.
Asheville, North Carolina, rightfully grabbed headlines as the town was devastated by floodwaters, with more than 100 people dying.
The story in Virginia was different. In Southern Virginia, flooding rains ripped up roads and homes and claimed three lives.
I went to the town of Damascus to see how residents are recovering from a once-in-a-lifetime storm. It’s the first of two stories I produced as part of our Hurricane Preparedness week.
Damascus is about a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Richmond, sitting close to the North Carolina and Tennessee state lines. Tourists for years would flood into Damascus in part for the Virginia Creeper Trail, but Helene washed that trail out.
They call it “Trail Town USA” for the numerous trails that intersect here. In fact, the Appalachian Trail runs right down Laurel Lane.
But the main attraction is the Virginia Creeper Trail. A rails-to-trails conversion that brings thousands of visitors to town every year.
And now the most famous half of it is gone.
Town Manager Chris Bell moved here for an easier way of life, taking the job just two months prior to the flood.
“But also gets back some time for myself after running my own company for 26 years. But then September 27th came along, and Helene had different plans for me. Obviously, there was the crisis moment itself when the town was actually flooding. Water rose 13.5 feet in about 45 minutes. We’re out. No, no power.”
He says all of their downtown businesses got flooded: “So the Creeper Trail has three owners: the town of Abington, the town of Damascus, and then the U.S. Forest Service. So the Forest Service section is from Damascus up to White Top, and that’s the 17 miles that really got trashed. As the rain hit, the water came down. It hit all those trestles, knocking about 18 of them.”
The iconic trestles turned from an attraction to a hazard. When the trestles were knocked off their foundations, water started rushing through town. Thankfully, it happened during the day when you could see the river jump its banks.
Danny Crockett saw the water rising in his backyard quicker than ever before and decided it was time to go. If he didn’t, he told me, “We’d been dead. I feel certain.”
Crockett survived, but his house didn’t. It was one of several that got washed away by the raging river. You can still see the power of the river from his old backyard.
“Well, they replaced that bridge about, I was told, about nine years ago ... And I talked to the guys when they was building it, and they said, it’ll be here for 100 years or longer. So they missed it by just a few years.”
But he has a new house now, thanks to volunteers and donations that came in from around the country.
“The Forest Service is hoping that within a year, year and a half, they can get that trail rebuilt,” Bell said. “They have an award of that contract that we should know sometime in mid to end of September.”
Rebuilding the trail will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but that money has already been allocated by Congress.
Once the trail is back, then this town will be fully back as well.
For more information on Damascus’ journey back from Helene, you can follow updates from the town here.
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