BAT CAVE, N.C. — Driving through the Hickory Nut Gorge, you may be shocked to hear the excitement in the voice of locals about just how far the area has come in the eight months since Helene.

“We finally have a bridge over to Chimney Rock Park. It was, I guess, it was just completed. It’s not open yet, but it’s looking pretty good,” said resident Ken Potter.

What You Need To Know

  •  Ken Potter lives in Bat Cave, North Carolina, which is still closed to the public

  •  While his house was OK during Helene, his neighbors weren't so fortunate

  •  Potter says there's still tons of debris all around their community

  • He hopes other people will continue to volunteer to help them rebuild

For people like Potter, seeing the small steps of progress means the world.

“I mean, they’ve done a lot of work to these buildings, getting them straightened up and ready to reopen,” Potter said.

Potter lives in Bat Cave, North Carolina.

“One of the weirdest things that we got used to was the road moving across the river into where the river used to be,” Potter said.

His house was miraculously spared, but his neighbors nearby weren’t as fortunate.

“This was all washed away,” he said. “All these houses over here, houses have fallen in and are still just laying there, and, you know, it’s just really surreal the way everything has turned out.”

Even though his house is high up from the river on the mountain, Potter said he and his wife evacuated to a friend’s house in Lake Lure to wait out the storm.

“We were actually out of the house for a month,” Potter said.

It took them about three days after the storm to get up on their street to see the devastation. He said in the eight months since the storm, he still has a long way to go.

“Debris removal came in and took one load. Probably four months ago,” Potter said. “They haven’t been back. So that’s, that’s been sitting here. We drive by that every day.”

Many homeowners are left sitting in limbo, awaiting help to rebuild.

 “The two houses there have been in their families for 70 years. And, you know, insurance won’t help because it was a landslide,” Potter explained. “FEMA is not going to help because it’s his second home. And they’re like, ‘What are we going to do?’ And so they’ve pretty much lost everything up here.”

It isn’t just on his street. Potter said even though NCDOT and volunteer crews have been working around the clock, the amount of devastation that remains is unbelievable.

“As you can see, everywhere we go, there’s still debris piled everywhere,” Potter said. “And that’s not even debris of things. But all of this, the river just came and took it.”

Still, what has kept him going are the volunteer groups like local contractors or local nonprofits that have started in the area. One of those groups is Moms for WNC that was built out of the storm and the determination of the people in the mountains.

Potter hopes as the months go on, that determination will continue as they put the pieces back together.

“It’s a whole community coming together to rebuild,” he said.

Potter said while they are ecstatic anytime people come to volunteer in the Bat Cave community, one thing to keep in mind is that roads in and out of Bat Cave are still closed if you are not a local.

Make sure you contact one of the many volunteer groups to coordinate before coming into the Bat Cave area.