10/04/2024
❤️🩹Community coming together to lift each other up. That’s what we saw today, folks. ❤️🩹
🌟no looting, fighting, stealing
🌟no bodies on the ground
🌟huge delivery trucks from Sysco and others suppling food & water
🌟water, hot meals, phone chargers, generators with extension cords
🌟people falling over each other to help others and ask how they were doing and what did they need.
🌟tons of crews working on telephone poles, construction trucks bringing equipment and the sweetest police/sheriffs dept guys you’ve ever met
We met Margaret at 8am and we were escorted past the blocades ( we are with her 😂 ) into Lake Lure. We headed down to the area by the beach - the old abc & Lured Market for those who know it.
The road was blocked last there but there was a food / homemade ‘hot’ shower / generators / cold water at Lured and a supply distribution in the abc. All local run - younger ones taking care of the large elderly population that made it thru the mountians for a meal and some company.
It took us 2 hours to get the starlink set up - the car outlet wasn’t strong enough and we headed to the Red Mountain hardware store to ‘borrow’ the power cords that lead out to the parking lot ( nicest people, they were giving help day one!).
The lake looked low and brown, trees were down everywhere and a few landslides were pulling the road off the edge of the banks. We had to go to the the top of a hill to see the giant floating pile of debris which is slowly sinking into the lake. Clean up is going to be massive.
We spent about 5 hours there before heading home. Obviously we were not near Chimney Rock but it is as bad as we see in photos. I can only speak for lake lure… the folks we met were feeling blessed and lucky to be alive. No power? No internet? No gas & stores? Yes, merely inconvenient.
I’ve got plenty to say on what I heard on FEMA and other resources, but this is a positive post and it’s going to stay that way. Keep giving. That area, especially with it’s tourism economy is going to suffer greatly over the next year ❤️🩹
