MANKATO — For Jim Norman, a brief family visit to celebrate an uncle’s 90th birthday in Asheville, North Carolina, turned into a dangerous return home for the ages.
The retired former Blue Earth County commissioner and four others first arrived in the Asheville area last Thursday, just as Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida’s Gulf coast. Winds topped 140 mph and a 15-foot storm surge followed. Still, Asheville, in the state’s western mountain region, was some 750 miles and three states inland.
Hurricane warnings throughout the southeast U.S. had sounded all week. But the intensity of the storm, particularly the two-foot inland rainfalls, took many by surprise.
Was there ever a time Norman’s group thought the North Carolina trip should have been canceled?
“We’ve all asked ourselves that many times,” Norman said Friday, recounting the “harrowing” experience one week later. “We thought it’d maybe just be a bad rainstorm.”
Norman, 70, was joined by friend Judy Ahlstrom of St. Peter, and sisters Judy Hepworth and Diane and Joyce Norman. It didn’t take long for the seriousness of the inland storm to set in.
By last Friday morning, heavy rains were already flowing through the streets of Asheville. Water and supplies were already being depleted in the neighborhood. A 7 p.m. curfew went into effect. Still, Norman thought they’d be okay.
“I’ll be honest, we still didn’t make that decision to flee,” he recalled. Still, emergency phone messages became regular, even annoying: “Go to higher ground!”
By Saturday, the Norman group agreed and soon turned thoughts to getting out of the deluge.
“We had some supplies but that wasn’t going to last,” Norman said. “We knew things weren’t going to be up and running for several days.”
But cell phone towers were down and Internet service lost, meaning there were no GPS routes to follow.
The escape route for the fivesome toward that “higher ground” was west through the mountain roads, many of which were already closed, several with downed trees and powerlines. Interstate 40 was closed due to mudslides.
“It took four hours to go 50 miles,” Norman said. And the gullies through the mountain roads were filling up with torrential rainfall, causing concerns over potential flash floods.
But as the Normans, in their rental vehicle, climbed through the hills, cell phone service returned and allowed for safer travel.
“It really wasn’t until then that we thought we could make it out of there,” Norman said.
Back in Minnesota
Norman said his group was truly fortunate to finally make it home to Minnesota by Monday. Several communities they passed along their mountain path were gone, with the death toll rising in many areas, with still hundreds either missing or unaccounted for.
“We saw so much devastation,” he said.
His brother Tom, 79, had also been in the Asheville area but on the eastern side of the French Broad River. He had a bit easier time getting out of the region, driving first south and then west. Western North Carolina and parts of eastern Tennessee seemed to get hardest hit by rains, some reporting up to 29 inches.
Ironically, the brothers never were able to get together in Asheville. Yesterday, the Lake Crystal natives were happy to be at home in Mankato. The rental company asked if Norman might be able to return it to the Asheville airport.
Instead, he was happy to pay a $200 fee and drop the rental car off at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
“We all kind of said, ‘We might never go back to Asheville,’” Norman noted.