- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(intense music) (thunder rumbling) (intense music continues) (Distant ambulance siren) (intense music) (thunder rumbling) (intense music) (thunder rumbling) (intense music) (thunder rumbling) - Good evening.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Amy Burkett with a special edition of "Carolina Impact."

Close your eyes, and you can still see that timeless tranquility of the North Carolina mountains.

Those old memories of what our favorite mountain towns used to look like, washed away on a single September day by Hurricane Helene.

- This is an unprecedented tragedy that requires an unprecedented response.

- [Amy] The surprise storm swamping Western North Carolina with up to 30 inches of rain, plus 70 mile an hour winds.

But now, months later... - I always knew I was gonna rebuild.

I just didn't know that early on how I was gonna do it.

- [Amy] "Carolina Impacts" Jason Terzis takes us to the tiny town of Lansing where the reopening of a store means so much more.

"Carolina Impacts," Chris Clark, shows us how trees toppled by the storm are being transformed in Asheville.

Also in Asheville, "Carolina Impacts" Dara Khaalid has the story of comfort for many coming in the form of a warm shower.

But first, we travel two and a half hours north of Charlotte to Burnsville to follow the search for victims still missing from the storm there and elsewhere.

"Carolina Impacts" Jeff Sonier and videographer Max Arnold are in Burnsville with more.

- Yeah, Hurricane Helene took a lot from the folks who live here in western North Carolina.

Homes were lost, lives were lost, and the storm also took Lenny Widawski, and it still hasn't given him back.

(soft music) - He's just not there.

You're gonna get me crying, and I don't wanna cry.

- Lydia Widawski tears up as she walks up to where her brother Lenny's cabin on the river used to be.

- But yeah, he always wore that hat and these flowered shirts.

He'd be out here every day on the front porch, practicing his fiddle or his guitar.

(soft music continues) - [Jeff] Lydia says Lenny's music seemed to flow with the river itself until the river washed it all away.

All except for this old stone chimney.

- You know, the river just came up, and people's property not just like this, but the way the water expanded out, it just took everything with it.

- [Jeff] The damage in and around Burnsville from Hurricane Helene was devastating.

In many places, roads are still impassable.

Rebuilding is still impossible because of the destruction that still remains.

But Lenny Widawski's house wasn't just destroyed, it disappeared with Lenny inside and no sign of him since then.

- I don't find peace coming back here.

I mean, there's nothing here.

(soft music continues) - [Jeff] Nothing but this old fiddle.

Now fashioned into a memorial for Lenny.

- Says "RIP old friend.

You were the best."

I had no idea that so many people knew him.

I love him.

- [Jeff] The violin was left behind here in Burnsville by his musician friends and fans over in Spruce Pine, where Lenny played his fiddle on stage every Tuesday night.

- He did some beautiful melodies on this song.

- [Jeff] Barry Stagg owns this former downtown drugstore, now a listening room, with memories of Lenny lingering in every note they played.

♪ Does the power of love dissolve in time ♪ ♪ Does the magic of those memories go old like summer wine ♪ ♪ Does the - [Jeff] So that's him there in Hawaiian shirt.

- In the Hawaiian shirt, yes.

Yes, he was here every Tuesday night without fail.

That's why we miss him so much, because he was just almost like a brother to me, because whenever I saw him, I got a hug, and whenever I left, I got a hug.

- Actually, Lenny was the first person I met here.

He pretty much invited me to come in here and play.

He had no idea that I was even a musician, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Lenny.

- He had that personality.

He would reach out to people.

He knew how to kind of include them in whatever it was he was doing.

- Lenny was sort of the life of the party everywhere he went and he brought life, joy, and good times to any gathering.

And it was apparent when he entered the room.

You could just feel the energy.

♪ Does the power of love dissolve in time ♪ - For 13 years, Lenny stood right to my right, and he was an amazing musician.

Violinist.

Do we miss him?

Absolutely.

♪ Turn into gold (singers harmonizing) - [Jeff] Driving back to Burnsville, we passed dump truck after dump truck, hauling load after load of storm debris down the mountain.

It's that debris, and the rugged terrain, and the winter weather here in the mountains, that makes the search for Lenny Widawski and the others still missing so difficult.

- There comes a point when you've done all you can do, and, fortunately, we've still got people who are trying, and they'll continue to try for a while, and hopefully, they're successful.

We don't know.

- [Jeff] The Burnsville Fire chief ads that volunteers are doing most of the search and recovery now following that same path along the Toe River where friends and neighbors last saw Lenny alive.

- And when he went into his house, he was pretty much, from what I understand, prepared.

I mean, he had a life jacket on and all this that, but it just took the whole house within minutes.

- [Jeff] Lenny's best friend, Steve Casper, says Lenny's house traveled downstream more than a mile where witnesses say it finally struck a washed out bridge.

- So when his house hit it, they said what they saw is the house just instantly nose-dived and never came back up again.

A couple weeks later, they had found his life jacket, they had found pieces of his house, they found pieces of his property.

Not much, but nothing else.

(soft music) - He's got to be under all this mess somewhere.

(soft music continues) I'm missing Lenny.

I definitely am missing Lenny.

(soft music continues) - Yeah, right after Hurricane Helene, the list of people unaccounted for numbered in the hundreds.

Now it's fewer than 10.

Lenny Widawski is still on that list of the missing, but there's another list here in Burnsville that's growing.

It's the list of people who are missing Lenny.

Amy.

- Thank you, Jeff.

In Burnsville and Spruce Pine, much of the help for victims of Hurricane Helene has come from Samaritan's Purse, headed by Reverend Franklin Graham.

The price tag for Helene is in the billions, with estimates ranging from 30, 60, 80, even upwards of $250 billion.

And it's not just the losses already incurred.

In Asheville alone, businesses are expected to see a loss of nearly $600 million in visitor spending during the first quarter of 2025, with restaurants and hotels among the hardest hit.

But some businesses have defied the odds and reopened their doors, giving hope to others.

"Carolina Impacts," Jason Terzis, joins us with more.

- Well, months after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, business owners are still struggling to recover, facing long-term closures, insurance denials, and financial strain, many businesses may never open their doors again, but if you look in certain spots, you will find glimmers of hope.

For this story, we head way up to the northwest corner of the state to Ash County, which borders both Tennessee and Virginia to the small town of Lansing.

Population?

Well, right around 130.

(banjo playing) A banjo, an acoustic guitar, some good old toe tapping, and a guy in overalls in a cowboy hat blowing on a jug.

It's quintessential Western North Carolina mountains.

- First and foremost, we're a community gathering space.

- [Jason] You won't find a single stoplight in the small town of Lansing, although there is a three-way stop.

Located just by the town's main intersection, sits the Old Orchard Creek General Store, which in many ways, is the heartbeat of this tightly-knit community.

- It's hard to put into words just what it means.

- [Jason] On this mid-December day, what appeared to be the entire town, showed up.

It was a celebration marking the store's grand reopening.

Dogs invited, too.

The store has all sorts of goodies like blankets, flowers, paintings, and books.

- Oh, this is the best.

It's such a good book.

- There's coffee, beer, and wine.

Trail mixes, biscuit mixes, jams, fresh bread, and canned nuts.

And in the fridge, cheesecake and glass coke bottles.

- We just have kind of some specialty goods that you wouldn't really expect to find in a more rural environment.

So that kind of makes us stand out.

- [Jason] Orchard Creek was the first downtown Lansing business to reopen after Hurricane Helene's devastating floods.

- It's just wonderful to see one of our business get open back up, and to see how people have responded to reopening.

- [Jason] The store itself dates back nearly 80 years.

- The building itself is from the 1940s.

- [Jason] And it's always been a general store.

- And I used to come into the store when it was Ms. Hart's general store to buy candy as a kid.

- [Jason] Shelby Trammel bought Orchard Creek a little over a year ago.

Things were going along just fine until that fateful Friday.

- From what I remember from that Friday.

It's kind of a blur.

- [Jason] Big Horse Creek runs right alongside downtown.

So shallow, you can usually walk across it.

A tiny little old field branch with its meandering ducks empties out into it.

- You can look at the creek and you can say, "Wow, that's a nice little trout strain, pretty little creek."

And this little stream right here that goes into it.

Not much to it.

- [Jason] Shelby opened the store that Friday morning as usual.

- I opened up, served regulars, and then the power went out around 10:00 AM.

And then I started to notice the water rising in the surrounding creeks.

They started to kind of breach the road and fill the basement first.

And then next thing I know, there's about two to three feet of water in my store.

- [Jason] She did whatever she could in the precious minutes she had left to try to save as much as possible.

- It was a frantic race against time.

- [Jason] But the water rose so fast, Shelby had to get out.

- It was about when the water was around chest-high that I decided I knew that I needed to get out.

- You could not have imagined that kind of raging water that we saw and the strength of it.

- [Jason] But just as quickly as the water came, it went, all within a few hours.

By six o'clock that Friday night, Shelby went back to assess the damage.

- I was in a state of shock, honestly.

The water lifted up commercial equipment that weighed hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

All my inventory kind of softened mud, and everything was pretty much ruined.

- Most of the downtown businesses had anywhere from four to eight feet of water.

- All down the street.

I mean, from here all the way down it was, you know, the businesses were devastated.

- [Jason] After the initial shock wore off, attention quickly turned to cleanup.

Mud a foot deep everywhere, and everything in the store from plywood, drywall, and insulation had to come out.

- On the one hand, I was grieving that first week, and then also trying to formulate "What do I do?

How do I move forward?"

- [Jason] The total loss at the general store was valued at $300,000.

Shelby's GoFundMe page raised about a third of that, and a community-wide effort was made to help her rebuild.

- I always knew I was gonna rebuild.

I just didn't know that early on how I was gonna do it 'cause I didn't know where the funding was gonna come from.

- [Jason] It took nearly three months to rebuild what Helene destroyed in a day.

- We had people here working nonstop 24 hours a day sometimes.

- It was an incredible example of community.

- [Jason] With every other business in town still boarded up, and remnants of Helene everywhere, the general store once again welcomed guests.

- I didn't know what to expect for today.

So to see the turnout has been nonstop, and it's just...

It's overwhelming.

- We've seen locals, we've seen second homeowners, we've seen tourists and visitors come in, and really just to celebrate the fact that this is back.

- You should be very proud.

You should be probably too tired to be proud.

- I'm too tired to be... Too tired to feel anything right now.

- Yeah.

- [Jason] The store's reopening wasn't just about a business welcoming back customers, it meant so much more.

It represented a beacon of hope, a shining light for a small town that has been through so much.

- I think what it says about Lansing what Lansing has always been about, which is that we are a resilient community.

We're a very tight-knit community.

We are neighbors, we are friends, we are community.

We are people that really do support each other, which is something that you don't find so much in the world anymore.

- I've told people a number of times that I'd become a little bit of a skeptic.

My faith in mankind had kind of dwindled over the last 15 years, 20 years, a little bit at a time.

But when I came out here, and the water's receded, and I saw the volunteers from all over the place, from here in town, from states away from here, it restored a lot of my faith in mankind to see that.

- Okay, that's some real community spirit.

- Yeah, there's something about small towns where you really see this sort of thing where small towns really come together.

And, of course, they're hoping that this is just the beginning there.

Town leaders, including Mayor Powers there in Lansing, have created the Lansing Alliance, which is working on creating a large fund, including grants, they hope, to help get all the other businesses back in town reopened.

They're also hoping to replace the old sewer system, which suffered major damage with all the debris.

So still a lot to do, but the road to recovery is finally, they're finally getting going on it.

- Thanks so much for bringing us the story, Jason.

- Absolutely.

- Well, one of the other brutal results from Helene is the lack of access to water.

Officials in Asheville reported nearly 100,000 people didn't have access for weeks.

Meaning basic necessities like showering and washing clothes were impacted.

"Carolina Impacts" Dara Khaalid and videographer John Branscomb show us how a Charlotte nonprofit stepped up to make sure people in the mountains are able to do what many of us take for granted, shower.

(airplane whirring) - [Worker] Slide them in, pull back.

(tool shooting) - [Dara] At first glance, you'd think it was a professional construction site.

(tools whirring) There's sawing, wiring, drilling, and lots of big power tools all around.

- These guys have put me to work hammering, and nailing, and doing all kinds of stuff.

(drill whirring) - [Dara] They've got such a good flow, they look like they've been working together for years.

But truth is, it hasn't been long at all.

- I try to get out here whenever I can a couple times a week and lend a hand.

- [Dara] And these aren't paid workers.

They're volunteers who sprung into action after Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina.

- I really wanted to get my hands dirty and be part of, you know, being able to help in any way that I could.

- [Dara] That help is building portable showers from scratch, nail by nail with the nonprofit Appalachia Shower Project.

The organization was founded shortly after the storm.

- Made a couple of runs that week up to the mountains just to deliver things with our church van.

So I got to see some of the immediate devastation that was going on, see how badly impacted people were.

And it was tugging at my heartstrings, I felt like that wasn't enough.

- [Dara] Then a few days later, founder Roger Mills got a nudge from a friend.

- Sent me a text on the Thursday after Helene with a picture of a shower trailer.

Then she said, "Could you build a couple of these?"

- [Dara] After drawing up some plans, that's exactly what he did with some help from his wife, Erin.

- He knows his talents and he knows his abilities.

And so watching him step up, and take that on was inspiring but not surprising.

This is kind of who he is.

- [Dara] Though the days are long volunteering, Roger doesn't let it stop him.

- One of the things that I felt guilty about in the immediate, you know, wake of the hurricane was like, my 30 minute luxurious shower at the end of a hard day.

I was thinking about how sweaty I was after a day's work and how great that shower felt, and I was worried that people up there, not just for comfort, but for hygiene, for sanitation, were gonna be in bad shape.

- [Dara] For his day job, Roger is a high-end luxury home builder.

Skills that come in handy as he's crafting the six-foot-wide showers that come with plumbing, lights, and a tankless water heat.

- LOEWE's has been incredibly generous.

They basically donated all the material we could use to build as many as we felt like were practical.

- [Dara] It's a task that's taken a lot of time and manpower.

- It seems like the most benign tool ever.

- [Dara] So much so, Roger has temporarily stepped away from his company to be all in.

His employees have volunteered their time and his business partner, Geoff Eloge, has been running their company and volunteering with the non-profit, too.

- It just made tons of sense, and so it seemed like a great way that we could use our company, use our resources, use our team to do something that was meaningful.

(soft music) - [Dara] Meaningful might be an understatement.

Here at the village at Covenant Community in Asheville, these four showers are the only option for those who've lost everything.

- It's better than not having anything or using baby wipes 'cause, you know, we have had to do that.

- [Dara] It's a whole new way of life now for Alicia Billings, as she cranks up the generator that powers her RV.

It's where she and her son live now since losing their two-bedroom home.

- See, the power was out, took out the septic system, so it's just, FEMA did deem it unsafe to live in.

- [Dara] But for the mom of four who couldn't get in touch with her kids during the storm, material things were the least of her worries.

- It was really scary not knowing if they, any of them were okay, you know?

I mean, one of my children had to swim out.

Another one saw, you know, people drown, and it was...

So that puts a toll on mom, too, you know?

To know your kids are going through that.

- [Dara] What helps ease her mind is knowing they now have a safe place to stay.

Their RV is parked in the grass at Covenant Community Church.

- I am very proud of our church to know that we are putting boots to the ground and helping where we can has been just a huge blessing for us to know that there is a need and we're gonna do what we're called to do.

- [Dara] Right after the hurricane, Covenant opened its property for people to park RVs.

Now it's turned into a community of 20 RVs with plans to soon have roads, sewer, water, and power lines.

- The church is not Sunday morning.

The church is what the church does Monday through Saturday.

It's about being there for people, helping them in difficult times, and in good times.

- [Dara] Whether it's kindness from church members in a once-empty lot, or from volunteers eagerly making showers in a warehouse.

- I'm not looking for gratitude.

That's not why we do things like this.

I just wanna know that somebody got clean at the end of the day.

- [Dara] The people of Western Carolina have a lot of support as they head down the long rebuilding road.

For "Carolina Impact," I'm Dara Khaalid.

- Thank you, Dara.

The Appalachia Shower Project has built a total of seven shower units so far that have gone to various places across the mountains.

They don't plan on building anymore at the time, but will repurpose the ones already built to help others in the future.

But staying in Asheville for our last story this evening, in the wake of Helene, the mountains faced unprecedented damage.

Trees were uprooted, and the debris scattered everywhere.

Instead of letting the devastation define the region, "Carolina Impacts" Chris Clark explores how the fallen timber is being transformed into something beautiful.

(animation whooshing) - [Chris] For generations, the mountains of Western Carolina have drawn people in with their beauty.

Lush Green forests in the spring gave way to hillsides a blaze with color in the fall, and ironically, it's the same force that present the region's greatest challenge.

Hurricane Helene left the canopy that gave shelter and shade a tangled mess.

- Oak trees, birch trees, the whole tree is down, giant root ball is sticking up in the air.

- You look up, and there's debris 20 feet up in the trees.

You know, it was devastating.

- [Chris] The forest wasn't just disturbed, it was dismantled.

The sheer volume was overwhelming.

But it wasn't just the quantity that made this job daunting.

- We couldn't ship the trees out of state because of the invasive species, the bugs that are in it.

So you're not allowed to do that.

And the worst case example would be the fire pits, just burn everything.

- [Chris] So they got creative.

(chainsaw whirring) FEMA's Inter-agency Recovery Coordination worked with the Army Corps of Engineers, US Forest Service, Red Cross, and Team Rubicon to try and repurpose the down timber starting with firewood.

- As trees were identified that these would be appropriate trees for firewood for that part of the country, then we would run those trees with our heavy equipment load, a firewood processing machine, and then we would cut and split firewood in mass.

- [Chris] The Arboretum was hit especially hard.

Hiking trails were a twisted mess of limbs and uprooted trees.

All that remained of some were the signs designating what was once there.

- How can we be a leader, and how can we show as an example, that we can with a little extra organization, put this material to good use?

- [Chris] Their solution?

Don't even take the stuff off site.

(machines whirring) (intense music) Sure, they removed the larger pieces, but the crews from Ashbrook ground up everything else to be spread out when the pathways reopen.

- We use on our trails oak chips because actually they don't decompose very quickly, and so some of those oaks are being processed into chips, and in a clean way that we can then repurpose on our site.

- [Chris] And about those larger pieces, (bright music) some found a new purpose inside Gabe Aucott's wood shop.

(machine whirring) But this master craftsman will transform these weathered planks into tables, cabinets, and chairs.

- There's so much material that there's still just logs everywhere that are available.

- [Chris] Boards piled high, rough-hewn, and waiting for Gabe to give them new life.

The material itself adding another layer to the masterpiece.

- Wood is one of the few mediums that's available that's beautiful as an object as it is, like, you know, I guess there's certain types of stone and other naturally-occurring materials that fit in this category, but wood's something that you can just cut open and polish, and it's already a thing of beauty.

- [Chris] The second chance timber giving woodworkers like Paul a chance to recover, too.

Transforming their craft into a healing process as they shape new beginnings from the storm's remnants.

- Soon as we got power back here, I was down here in the shop just because it was therapy.

One of the things that is beautiful about art and craft is that it comes with a story.

(laughing) You buy something at Walmart, you bought something at Walmart, but you buy something from an artist or a crafts person, you're buying their work, you're buying part of their life, you're buying, you know, their experience.

- [Chris] Right now, that experience comes with an undercurrent of guilt, knowing their shops survived while so many of their friends' businesses were lost.

- I have all my friends who were not as lucky as I was.

To come through so unscathed physically is is difficult.

- Obviously, really bittersweet.

The woodworking community that's orphaned by this storm event is just one part of like a massive wave of people in all different trades and beyond.

- [Chris] Of course, it's the artist who finds the light in the darkest of times, seeing the beauty in the depths of this tragedy.

- It's opened up all these new vistas and things that you couldn't see before.

You now can see 'cause the trees are gone.

- [Chris] And gives them plenty of material to work with.

Although getting to it might be an issue.

- This is gonna be something that a lot of us are gonna tackle by hand, just with old-fashioned kind of techniques.

Better than CrossFit, in my book.

You know, some pump iron, some pump oak.

So let's go.

- [Chris] The work clearing the debris is slow.

Each pile a reminder of the storm's wrath.

The lumber, finding new purpose in the hands of those who know how to shape it into something beautiful.

In time, the forest will return, stronger and more vibrant, reminding everyone that even in the wake of destruction, beauty's not lost, but merely waiting to be found.

For "Carolina Impact," I'm Chris Clark.

(bright music) - Thank you, Chris.

As we know, the region will take years, perhaps even decades to get back to normal.

The silver lining?

This immense supply of timber provides years worth of raw materials, giving the community a chance to reshape devastation into something useful.

As we close this special "Carolina Impact," we want you to know we'll continue to cover the momentum in the mountains as communities rebuild.

Thank you so much for joining us for this special resiliency and rebuilding after Hurricane Helene.

Goodnight, my friends.

(intense music) (intense music continues) (intense music continues) (intense music continues) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.

(intense music continues)