Help Rebuild a Family's Hope After Disaster

My best friend, Valerie Ehlinger and her three sons lost their home and all their belongings when the town of Swannanoa, North Carolina was ravaged by Helene.

The picture you see is of Valerie's neighborhood, completely flooded - her house right in middle, with her on top, struggling to pull her dog, Maggie up to safety. Thankfully the family was rescued by a heroic neighbor and all are safe, including their pets.

Unfortunately, she had no flood insurance on her house and will need financial assistance while she finds a place to stay during the long journey ahead, attempting to rebuild her life.

If there is anything you're able to contribute, Valerie, her three sons: Zaden, Xyon and Sydney, two dogs: Maggie and Waylon, their cat Fizzy and Killer Mike (their amazing bearded dragon) would sincerely appreciate it.

From Valerie:

I live in a 100 year old house in a small neighborhood called Beacon Village, built for employees at Beacon Blanket factory. It’s a very historic, tight knit community, between Asheville and Black Mountain. A 4 lane road divides my backyard from the Swannanoa River.

Keep all of this in mind.

I woke up about 5:00am (I think, times are all a little fuzzy now) Friday morning. My son, Xyon, was the only one home with me, and we were very concerned about the 200-year-old giant maple tree in my backyard. There were extremely strong winds, and we were afraid a branch would fall on the roof of the house. I even moved my truck between the houses, in case a branch fell. It was already raining, but it was just rain. We got a flashlight and shined it into the back of the backyard and could see the water was starting to rise up a little bit, but nothing crazy. ‘Let’s just keep an eye on it.’ It was a lot of hard rain, but that wind. Holy crap.

By 6am, the water was completely covering the yard. A little more worrisome, but I watched a local weather report and it said the worst of the storm should be over by 8am. So we reassessed. At this rate, by 8, some water might come into the house. We picked up things off the floor, like their dad’s guitars and amps, game systems, stuff like that and put them on beds. Ok, we should be good.

Around 6:30 we went on the front porch. The water was up over the curb. Still not crazy, but “oh wow!”. We started discussing maybe gathering everyone up into the truck, in case the water did come in the house, because my truck sits up higher. Suddenly, a guy comes running down our street (it’s a dead end street, and we are just a couple of houses from the end). We were like “Hey are you ok man?” And he said “Yeah they’re closing 70. (For context, 70 is the road behind my house, and basically the only way in or out of my neighborhood.) So Xyon was like “oh sh*t how is anyone gonna leave then?” And the guy said “I don’t know but my truck just stalled out in the middle of the road, so if you leave, you’re going to have to drive through people’s front yards.” (Y’all, our front yards are small. They are full of trees, fences, electrical poles, fire, hydrants, and mailboxes. There is no driving through peoples yards.) So Xyon and I were like ok, well, I guess we’re not going anywhere now. We go back inside, I checked my phone for alerts, try to find something online, and all was quiet. Eventually, I looked out and the water was up to our back steps, and I’m now worried water ‘might’ come in the house. Xyon and I go around the house and start getting important things up off the ground. Their deceased father’s guitars, amps, game systems, etc. We also decided to start packing up some backpacks in case the water does get high, and we need to wade through water and get out. I think it was after 7am at this point. It’s still raining, INSANE wind, but if we gotta go…

By 7:30 we had bags packed and I look out the window and the water had fully submerged my neighbor’s crawlspace. So I start freaking out and telling Xyon that water is about to start coming into the house. No sooner than I tell him that, water starts coming up through the subfloor. Quickly. The water has gone from rising slowly, slowly in the backyard, to rising fairly quickly. We start debating whether we should get in the truck and sit it out or get on the roof of the truck. Just somewhere higher. Next thing I know, carpets are floating and furniture is starting to fall over, stuff is crashing all over the house. Waylon (our pointer) starts loosing his f*cking mind. Like, if a dog could scream like a woman, that’s what was happening. I get all of the pets on the sectional in the front corner of the living room. But Waylon is jumping around, freaking out. We get a small plastic travel aquarium/carrier and put Killer Mike, the bearded dragon, in it. Xyon sets him up on a shelf above a doorway, just in case. By now, the water is in the house up to my waist. It was rising that quickly. So I used my phone, which doesn’t have service now, but used the SOS feature to call 911. It routes me several counties over. I tell them we’re stuck in our house. Water is quickly rising and we need someone to come rescue us. She said I was calling the wrong county, and then transferred me to another county, and that lady basically said OK I’ll try to let your county know. So I was like alrighty, well I guess helps not coming.

Now all of the furniture is floating. Sh*t is crashing and falling over everywhere in the house. Water is now up to my chest. I look out the window and water is up to my head height outside. And I freaked. I tell Xyon we need to get out of the house, now. We have biometric deadbolts on the front and back, which are now submerged. I try to unlock the front door and the lock is completely frozen. So I told Xyon we’re gonna have to bust a window to get out. He floats me over the coat rack, I bust out the top pane of our living room window, right next to the front door. It’s not very big but we can get through it and it’s still above water a little bit. I get all the glass busted out and pull out the rest. Waylon has freaked out and started trying to make his way back to my bedroom, because my bed is his comfort zone. He’s gone, hopping from one piece of floating furniture to another, all the way towards the back of the house. Fizzy, the cat, jumps off the couch onto the fireplace mantle and I’m not sure where she went after that. She’s gone. But Maggie (Swiss mountain dog) is still sitting on the couch like a good girl lol exactly when I put her. By the time I get the glass broken and cleared out of the window, I’m now floating in my house, I can’t touch ground. I grab the top of the window and float my feet through, and stand on the windowsill outside. Xyon is swimming through floating furniture to try to get back to Waylon and pull him to the window. I start pulling the floating section of couch over to the window so I can get Maggie through. That girl did not want to come through that window, so I literally had to drag her. But I got her out and was holding onto her. By now the water is halfway up into the area where the glass was broken out. It’s about 6 inches from the top of the whole window frame. I can hear Xyon inside struggling with Waylon. He got him out of my bedroom and into the next room, but Waylon was fighting and screaming. He was just in full panic mode and fighting Xyon. I realized in like 60 seconds, the window is going to be fulling submerged. So I yelled out the hardest thing I have ever had to say in my whole life… I told him to leave all the pets behind and save himself. He was going to die if he didn’t get out right then. So he let go of Waylon and started trying to make his way to the living room window. By the time he made it to the window in thwa next room, he had to go underwater to get out. So I’m standing on the porch railing, holding onto the banister, and I have Maggie sitting up on my knee. Water is now up to my chest on the porch and is RUSHING by. Xyon gets out, grabs onto another banister and we’re just standing there, trying to figure out what the to do now. The water was all rising so fast we didn’t even have time to think. The current was trying to take us off of the porch now we’re trying to figure out how to get us and Maggie up on the roof. A door or some sort of plywood came floating by and I told Xyon to grab it, so we could try to get Maggie up on it. We got the upper half of her body on there, but she was struggling and couldn’t get the rest of herself up, so she was just dug in with her claws, holding on to the top of this door. I had ahold of her collar and was still trying to hold up the lower part of her body for her, but we were all struggling. So Xyon started trying to get on the roof to pull her up, but there was no where to grab but flimsy gutters where he was at. So I tell him OK, hold onto Maggie on the door, I’m going to try to hold onto the gutters and float around to the side of the house. I have a really old 60s metal awning over my kitchen window. If I could get to that, I could hoist myself up and get on the roof. I got there, and grabbed a vent pipe to pull myself up onto the roof. I scrambled to the front and we started trying to pull Maggie up. I get her collar again. We can’t lift her. She’s a Swiss mountain dog so not only is she big and heavy, but she has like 500 layers of undercoat and she’s soaking wet now. She was just so heavy. Xyon is floating so there’s no way to just lift something heavy up out of the water when you’re floating. But he’s trying to push her up while I pull under her arms. I’m on my belly, just trying my hardest to get her up. Xyon says if you can hold onto her and the door, he’ll come around and get up on the roof and maybe we can both pull her up. So that’s what he does, so now we’re both on the roof trying to get Maggie up out of the water, and she is struggling and fighting for her life so so hard. She keeps going underwater and coming back up and trying to grab the board and she just can’t and we can’t get her and it was so absolutely panicky, for a good 10 minutes. Then all of a sudden… her collar came off and she just f*cking floated away and I lost my sh*t. Now we’re both on the roof, we’ve had to leave pets in the house to drowned and Maggie is just gone. Water is up to the roof so everything I have is gone. ClHouse, truck, 51 years of bruising a life from nothing, and all of my animals are gone. The only thing left is Xyon and I on the roof of this house in rain and hurricane winds.

When I got on the porch with Maggie, I noticed my neighbors across the street were also on their railing, holding onto the banister. She’s 82 and her son is probably mid 50s. And they were just struggling as much as we were. By the time we got up on the roof, the water was almost up to their roof as well. They had about a full head height between the water level and the soffit of their roof. If it rose any more, she was going to drowned. But luckily, the water stopped rising at that point. All kinds of sh*t was floating by. Pieces of peoples houses, sheds, cars, shipping containers, fuel tanks, You name it. And sure enough, like the weatherman had said, around 8 o’clock it stopped raining. There was still really strong wind, but at least the rain had stopped. So the neighbors held onto their banister, and we sat on the roof, for hours. Watching things crash into houses around us, crash into the old Maple tree in my backyard, sheds would float up between the house and get caught in electrical wires, electrical poles were snapping, and the wires would go whipping through the air. It was absolute insanity. Almost all of my neighbors were out on their roof at this point. Two of our neighbors/households had gotten up in their attic with their pets and we could hear the screaming for help. Xyon and I sat there contemplating how to get to the old lady across the street, how to get her to us, how to get to other roofs to bust out the gables and get people out of their attic. But there was absolutely nothing we could f*cking do but sit there and watch the horror going on around we sat up there for hours, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. We could see helicopters occasionally flying above, but nobody was coming to help us. And I knew the lady across the street couldn’t hang on much longer. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these 2 neighbor guys on kayaks come floating down our street. I couldn’t see how, but they saved a young family and their two kids a couple of doors down. And then one of the guys came back with an ax and busted out the gable for one of the neighbors that was stuck in their attic and they were able to crawl out. He went to the other house and busted out that gable so those people could get out. And then one of the guys come floating up to our house and said if we put on the lifejacket and jump in the water, he can drag us to the embankment behind my neighbors house. Xyon and I immediately both started screaming and pointing to go save the lady across the street first. She was too old and frail to put the lifejacket on in the water and get dragged, so the guy pulled his kayak up on the roof, got up there, reached down, and just yanked her up out of the water. He could only get her torso up on the roof, but at least she was out of the water. They couldn’t pull her son up, so they decided to drag him to a garage roof. Then he came back for us. I put the lifejacket on, jumped in the water, and he pulled me across the street to the embankment. Then he went back for Xyon, but he towed Xyon to a different spot on the embankment. I crawled up and walked out onto the street and there was no one out there. It felt like a f*cking apocalypse. For the first time in my entire life, I stood there and did not know what to do. I had nothing, and I didn’t know where to go, so I stood there in the street and just started wailing because I had lost everything, even Xyon. Some people came out of their house and asked if I was OK and I was like f*ck no I’m not ok at all. They brought me inside and gave me some water and a towel and I just kept saying I need to find my son, I need to find my son. The guy asked what my son’s name was and he took off running through backyards screaming Xyon. He came back a few minutes later and said “I found Xyon. He’s down here” and led me through some backyards. I ran up to Xyon and he said “mom, they found Maggie!” I got to her, fell to my knees, and just started bawling. That 14 year old good girl had swam across and managed to get up on part of the embankment and some people pulled her up. So we got Maggie and sought shelter on a neighbors carport. People were bringing out some dry clothes and water. I was still crying because we had to leave our other pets to f*cking die in that house. Everybody was trying to console me but it was pointless. We sat there for about 20 minutes and then my friend Nicole that lives at the beginning of my street came walking around the corner and I can’t even put into words how relieved I was to see her face. She gathered up me, Xyon, and Maggie, and took us to her house. Everybody was out of power and water, but we had a safe place to go. She set us up with dry socks and some water and some food and totally took care of us. A couple of hours later we were sitting on the porch and I heard some dogs barking. I said “wow one of those really sounds like Waylon”. And Xyon was like oh my God it DOES sound like Waylon and ran down to the corner. And people… let me f*cking tell you. That guy on the kayak saved everyone on my street, one by one, all day, and then went back and broke my bedroom window and got Waylon out!!! Everyone in the neighborhood knew I had left pets behind, and I was super broken up about it. He heard about it and went and saved my dog. He said he tried going back and getting the cat, but the cat wouldn’t come to him. But that the cat was ALIVE. Fizzy had managed to get on some thing that was floating and was alive in the house. And let me tell you as soon as I heard that, Xyon, Nicole and I started gearing up to go back down there and get fizzy. By this point, the water had gone down, was a little lower than chest high, and full of oil, and fuel, and probably sh*t, but we waded through it. We got to the house, crawled over the wreckage inside and found fizzy, soaking wet and scared. As soon as I picked her up, she started purring. I saw that our backpacks were still on top of the fridge where I had put them earlier, when it started floating on its back. So Xyon waded into the kitchen to get them. On his way back, he found Killer Mike’s pet carrier, floating, completely full of water. He said “mom I don’t think Killer Mike made it” and took the lid off of the carrier. Y’all. Killer Mike popped up out of that water and cocked his head to the side like he was saying “Hey what’s up?” HE WAS ALIVE!! Everyone officially made it out of that house alive and I cannot tell you how fucking grateful I am for that alone.

Everything I own is gone. My house, my truck, and everything that I have saved and built up for 51 years of my f*cking life, gone. But my son and all of my pets are alive. It’s the best feeling in the whole world.

We already knew that looters would be coming out, and they did. So we saddled up several more times and waded through the muck and mud to get back to my house to save the most important things (like their deceased father’s guitars). The water was going down, but its ankle to shin deep mud everywhere in my house.

My neighbors, who barely spoke to me and the 2+ years I have lived there, showed the f*ck up for everyone in the neighborhood. It was amazing to see. The people at the beginning of the street were on higher ground so they didn’t get submerged, however everyone was out of power and water. But they brought out and shared whatever they could. No one came to save my neighbor lady until almost 6 o’clock that evening. All that time, NO ONE came to help any of us. We were broken off from getting out of the neighborhood, and no one was coming in to help us until that night. The whole lower part of my street was completely devastated and wiped out. But the people came together. There were people walking by Nicole‘s all day long asking if we had gotten our pets out, and when they heard that we did, they were literally jumping up and down and cheering in the street. It was amazing.

So, all of my kids, and all of my pets are safe. It appears there were multiple dam failures, and we were between them. The water that was slowly rising was from the storm. But the incredibly fast rising, and then the rushing water, was because of the dams. And the officials knew, and left us out there to die. They sent out an alert at 8am, but we were already on the roof by then. The system failed us, but our neighbors saved us.

I’m carrying a lot of guilt about my animals. When we were sitting up on the roof, I was bawling, knowing that they were struggling for their last breath below me. And then Maggie just floating off and not being able to save her. I was completely broken sitting up there. Every living thing in my house fought hard for its life that morning. This has all been so much for them, and they have been stuck like glue next to me since it all went down. And honestly, I’m clinging to them too.

And now we all have nothing but each other. USAA denied my insurance claim. They said a flood is a flood, no matter the cause. So my only hope is some money from fema. We are now homeless, all vehicles destroyed, and are desperately hoping the county doesn’t condemn the house. Because, then, not only am I homeless, but I’ll still have a mortgage to keep paying. It’s incredibly overwhelming and stressful.

I’ll try to keep everyone posted on where I’m at and what I figure out. But it just is what it is right now. I’m the most prepared person in the world, but I was not prepared for dams failing. So now I need to sort out what’s left of my life. ANYTHING you can contribute is tremendously appreciated. Because we are lost right now.

I hope everyone else affected by Helene is safe and had minimal damage. I know the body count keeps going up. And I am so thankful we were included in those numbers. Because, man, every one of us were a whisper away from dying, had it not been for a neighbor on a kayak.

Much love yall.