SWANNANOA, N.C. — Helene’s flooding caused significant damage to businesses in Buncombe County, including Harper’s Automotive in Swannanoa. 

"It just completely washed everything away,” said Kevin Coval, trying to get into Harper’s as he dodged a hole in front and ducked under a collapsed overhang. 

Coval began working at the business as a technician several months ago. 

The bays are filled with mud and debris. The roof collapsed several days after the storm. 

“It just crippled it,” he said. 

The destruction at the shop is part of widespread devastation in the Swannanoa Valley. Coval couldn't even get to Harper’s Automotive at first because of a landslide on Interstate 40. 

“It took me two days to figure out how to get over the mountain to get here,” he said. 

Coval’s own toolbox, filled with thousands of dollars worth of tools he acquired over his career since he was a teenager, was among the items impacted in the mess. 

“That was my personal tools. My livelihood to work on vehicles,” he said. 

Now, without work, he’s worried about his income and whether he and his family will be able to keep their home. 

“If it wasn’t for family, I don’t know what my family would do. I just had a baby girl. I got a 7-year-old. So, I’m struggling a little bit. It’s very hard,” he said. 

Fellow technician James Stafford, who also started working at the shop earlier this year, is also struggling. 

“In Old Fort, I found a hand sticking out of the bank about that much. It was a momma,” he said.

“There was two little kids in there like this. A little boy this tall and a little girl down there. Dead. I ain’t slept in four days, account of it. I can’t. I’ve tried. I mean, it’s hard,” Stafford said. 

Despite that trauma and loss of some of his belongings, Stafford has stayed busy volunteering his time. 

“It's just what I do. That’s the way the good Lord tells me to do,” he said. 

Shane Harper opened the shop about a year ago. 

“It’s hard for me to withstand everything, because it’s still hard. This is my first time actually being in here,” Harper said. 

Debris and rocks buried a blue Subaru. Other vehicles, including a Toyota truck, were crushed. A Ford Fusion is on site, but the team doesn’t know where it came from or who owns it. A Honda is missing. A Dodge van was left hanging on the riverbank, resting against a utility pole, but flood water did not move or damage a large truck that belongs to the shop. 

It’s difficult to take in the magnitude of the destruction. 

“I look at this like material things. We can always build back. Family you can’t,” Harper said. 

That positivity against all the odds is lighting a path forward. 

“In all the bad that done happened, we do see light at the end of the tunnel, and that’s a great thing,” he said. 

Harper is still looking for a new location for his business, but that’s difficult with so much destruction to buildings in the area. The impacts from the storm also make it difficult for employees to find work. 

Zach Penland owns the building and about half a dozen others along the same stretch of Swannanoa. That includes 80 storage units, a car wash, two furniture stores, a duplex and an athletics facility Montreat College uses. 

He said he’s going through the process of receiving assistance from the Small Business Administration.  

Penland said he’s almost opened it all back, but the Harper’s Automotive building is the biggest challenge due to infrastructure around it. He pointed specifically to the large hole that is eating away at U.S. 70 in front of the shop. 

Swannanoa faces these new challenges on top of calls for economic development that existed before the storm. 

A little more than 20 years ago the Beacon Manufacturing plant burned to the ground about a year after closing. 

Beacon was a thriving blanket maker after it opened nearly a century ago, employing thousands of people over the years, but two decades after the closure, the site still sits empty. 

Plans were announced earlier this year to re-vitalize the space with housing, parks and a performance space. 

After Helene, that effort has pivoted. 

The nonprofit Beacon Foundation has shifted its focus to relief and recovery. 

This month, a spokesperson said it gave $100,000 to the nonprofit Bounty and Soul, which provides free food markets and wellness education to the community. 

The Beacon Foundation also helped coordinate a free mobile medical center for the past month. 

A spokesperson for the foundation said the mobile medical center served 40 to 50 patients a day. It leaves the area Friday.