“I thought I was going to die. I really did.” A woman rides out Hurricane Helene with her granddaughter in the mountains of East Tennessee.
Stella Bolden has lived in Mountain City, Tennessee for almost 40 years but today she finds herself in an American Red Cross shelter. She spends her days waiting to see when she might be able to go back and see the damage. She’s also very attentive to her young granddaughter “Belle” who lived with her in the home but now sleeps on a cot next to her.
The storm is fresh in Bolden’s mind. In all of her years in Mountain City, she’d never seen anything like this before.
“It was terrifying”.
Stella knew there was a storm coming but didn’t realize it would be as bad. She recalls staying awake the night before as she looked out the window and watched the creek get closer and closer to the house. When the wind picked up, and it started whirring loudly, she made the decision to grab her granddaughter and rush to their car in the driveway.
“Between my house and the garage, it looked like Noah’s Ark and the wind; I could hardly get her in the car. I thought I was going to die. I really did. I wanted to cry but I didn’t have time to cry”, recalls Bolden.
Her neighbor called her over and she ended up staying through the night at her house.
“I sat and watched my house being destroyed. The side was being ripped off of it. The creek was at the end of my property, but that hurricane picked that creek up and shifted it right under my house.”
Bolden learned about a Red Cross shelter at the First Christian Church in Mountain City and she and her granddaughter arrived seeking a place to stay.
The American Red Cross partnered with First Christian Church to staff the shelter. The church has also been providing food since the shelter opened to the public.
Bold says the Red Cross volunteers have been “as sweet as can be.”
“They’ll go out of your way to help. I needed milk for the baby, and they got me milk. Stuff like that.”
Community members who’ve stopped by her property have told her that her house is destroyed and looked like a “bomb went off in it.” Bolden says, “The way they talk, we don’t know how long we’ll be here.” Gesturing toward her granddaughter she says, “She’s homesick, she misses her toys. But we’re calm. We’re trying.”
Bolden was one of over 20 people at the Mountain City shelter. Many of the people there, including new Red Cross shelter workers, have lived all their lives in Mountain City. Many of them fought back tears as they talked about the people they went to high school with, who’ve now lost everything.
Some people are still trapped in their homes in the outlying areas and are waiting for roads to be cleared so they can head into town. It will be a long process to rebuild and get back to some sense of normal, but the American Red Cross is committed to helping them every step of the way.
The American Red Cross is helping people like Stella Bolden in shelters across East Tennessee. Disaster-trained volunteers will be on the ground over the next few weeks assisting impacted communities as they recover from this devastating storm.
People affected by Hurricane Helene need urgent help now, and we can’t do this alone. You can help by making a financial donation by visiting redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED CROSS (800-733-2767) or texting the word HELENE to 90999.
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