Hurricane Helene Takeaways: What I Wish I Knew

Finally, finally in the last few days I find myself coming unstuck from Helene time, returning to the present. I can’t believe it’s taken an entire month to write out the story of that weekend.  In the last post, I was surveying the damage, discovering the inundated flower shop and the miraculously unscathed farm. My mission at that point was to try to go home. 

Spoiler: There was no way out of Asheville. I live south of the Cane River, which flooded I-26. In fact, all major interstates were impassable, and some still are. So I stayed the night with my niece. I woke up at 5 a.m. in her princess canopy bed with mermaids and unicorns all around. I was completely wired. Somehow I had a tiny amount of LTE signal, so I could send a few texts and emails and plan for the day. I needed to develop a consensus with the world. What were the expectations? Was everyone experiencing what I was experiencing? There was a weird chasm between the normalcy of my niece’s bedroom and the chaos of the flooded areas.

The radio was invaluable during this time. If you’re in Asheville, you know. If you’re not in Asheville, make sure you have an emergency radio. Without power and cell phone service, radio is all there is. Internet? Didn’t exist. TV? Yeah right. The radio is what you need. It took awhile for broadcasting to get set up, but when it happened, at least it was something. It helped me find a center, knowing that in fact I was in the middle of a regional crisis of historic proportions.

I spent the days after the flood, a Saturday and Sunday, gathering information. I needed to know as much as I could know about the extent of the damage. There was part of me that expected to walk into the flower shop and find it exactly as we left it, just wet. I imagined all the furniture could be in place, the books and vases still on the shelves.

It took two days to get into the shop, but when we opened the door, the incredible force of the water was obvious. It was like a mud tornado. It shredded and tossed everything and left it beleaguered and buried in a muddy morass. There wasn’t much to salvage.

Miraculously, my great grandmother’s Christmas cactus remained perched atop its high shelf by the front door. It was a little damp, but the shelf was tucked into a nook between two walls, so it hadn’t moved. Today the massive cactus is living in the middle of my living room. I don’t have a super houseplant friendly house, but I’m brainstorming on how to make it so.

Seeing the damage was really helpful in terms of being able to make a plan. I very quickly understood that my job was not to clean up and salvage things. There would be time for that later. My job was to figure out how to get the company back on its feet, keep jobs, respond to clients, plan for future events. My job was — and is — to focus on the future. There was nothing about the flood I could fix.

We did two days of salvage about a week apart. There’s another day to do, but it can wait for later. Since we don’t own the building, I’m not responsible for that part.

For posterity, here are some observations from the first crucial days after the flood, what I think I did well, and what I would have done differently:

• Fundraising. Oh how I hate putting my hand out, but people want to help. And we need help. Fundraising is the best way to fulfill both those needs. I kept saying, “I don’t know what we need, but I know we’ll need money.” And that was true! I set up direct fundraising through our website very early on. It took me a few days to set up a Go Fund Me. I wish I had done both from the very beginning. Like any other modern platform, Go Fund Me is run by algorithms that measure your momentum. When the people you know donate through Go Fund Me, it helps your fundraiser reach people you don’t know. The world of fundraising has been an insane free for all dictated by the algorithm. People with relatively little experience or expertise — and no personal damage — have been able to raise six-figure sums. People are free to give their money to whomever they choose, of course, but it’s frustrating to see resources get channeled to nebulous places because of the luck of the algorithm. It’s also frustrating to be frustrated. I feel like a jerk for begrudging others funding. However, some of these people are using footage of our street, overheads that include our shop, to raise money. They aren’t on our street. You can see why that feels icky to me. (By the way, our Go Fund Me is 71% of the way to our goal! If you want to contribute, even $5 helps with that whole algorithm situation. Here’s the link.)

• Keep moving forward. If COVID taught me anything, I learned it’s critical to keep going, keep moving, even if it’s in slow and small ways. Once a business halts, furloughs employees, suspends sales, it’s much more work to begin again. I am glad we kept going.

• Take pictures. I wish I had taken more. Weird but true. Taking photos seems so base in the moment, but they’re helpful to tell the story later. I have some, but I wish I had more.

• It’s OK if things seem to be moving really fast. Decisions have to me made in the aftermath of a life altering event. I tried to find balance, not move too fast. But there are a few decisions I wish I had made more quickly.

• Send emails. For some weird reason, it took me 6 days to send out an all staff email. True, I had been in touch with many people individually. True, many people didn’t have email or power during that time. I just wish I had done it maybe the Monday after the flood. Just because. It also took me a freakishly long time to send an email to this list. I felt like I had to have all the answers before I could do it. I wish I had done it sooner.

• Ask for PR help quickly and clearly. I had this expectation that other organizations would just help us get our story out because the damage we were experiencing was so obvious. It is not obvious. Sometimes, I asked people to help us spread the word about what happened, but I did it in a way that was too nuanced and deferential. I think it’s better to be direct about exactly what you’re hoping to see happen. The rare instances when people did help us organically felt amazing. The biggest stand out here is Eden Brothers, a national bulb and seed supplier based in Asheville. They featured us in their newsletter and sent a big donation to the Go Fund Me without me even asking. We’re not a big customer of theirs. We spend like $300 a year. They helped out of kindness, and it was so wonderful.

The days after the flood were terrible days for me. I’m sure you can all relate. It feels awful to experience something so tragic. It feels awful to feel self pity. It feels awful to ask for money when there are so many others in need. But there’s a choice to make in the face of tragedy: quit, or move forward. If the choice is to move forward, it means some things haven’t changed. My job hadn’t changed. My job is to provide the Carolina Flowers staff with the resources they need to do their jobs — and make sure there’s money for payroll.

Many times before now, my job has necessitated setting aside my feelings and doing what needs to happen. This time, that means setting aside self pity, frustration, shame. I try to look at those things on my own time. Otherwise, there’s work to do.

That sounds a bit harsh, but I don’t mean it that way. Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent some time reestablishing boundaries between my personal life and the business — my job. When you’re starting a business with no money, it has to be your whole world. It was my whole world. These days, Carolina Flowers is a big part of my identity, but it’s not everything. I have family and friends and hobbies and my home — things outside of my job that give my life meaning. As a result, the business doesn’t see growth rates of 60-100% per year like it did in the start up phase, but it does pretty well. And when a flood comes and destroys it, I can pick up the pieces of the business without having to pick up the pieces of my identity. My life has flood walls, if you will, and in this metaphorical instance, they held.