CRUSO, N.C. — Laurel Bank Campground is still months, if not years, away from fully recovering from Tropical Storm Fred.
Adam Pressley has been living next door to Laurel Bank Campground in Cruso for a few years now. He keeps an eye on the campground when owner Sherrie Lynn McArthur is away.
They met when Pressley roomed with McArthur’s son at Appalachian State University.
What You Need to Know:
- Laurel Bank Campground is still months, if not years, away from fully recovering from Tropical Storm Fred
- The campground flooded when the storm slowly rolled across the mountains
- Seven people died from the flood, four of which were at the campground
- The campground says FEMA won't step in and help recovery because the site is off the main road
“Very glad I was here with all of this and close by her with everything going on,” Pressley said.
He was referring to utter devastation from Tropical Storm Fred last August.
When the campground flooded, many of its residents hunkered down at Pressley’s house.
“Sherrie called me about two o’clock. [I] climbed some power lines and trees and then got to the house,” he said. “Sherrie had walked over the mountain and gotten my ATV and ferried people from over here.”
You might think that nearly a year later, it would look a little different. But piles of debris around the campground show that the scars still remain.
“It’s hard to not see the scabs every day,” Pressley said, walking through the site.
Those scabs are multiplied by the silence around the campground.
“May 1 would have been the opening day for the campground, and that was always a day we looked forward to,” Pressley said. “It was a hard winter and then an easier spring. But now that it’s campground season, it’s definitely hard to see the other campgrounds and not have our people here.”
It looks like it might stay this way for some time. Pressley says FEMA won’t help with repairs because the road is considered private, even though it’s only about 100 feet from the main road.
“We haven’t heard anything from the Corps of Engineers” he said. “It’s just way too much for any individual. Everybody’s willing but this is just way too much to clean up with a skid steer. We do feel a little forgotten up here, at times.”
The people in this community will never forget, even if this is a rare occasion in the mountains.
“Totally different kind of flooding than the coastal flooding, but equally as damaging,” Pressley said.
And for Pressley, this will always be home.
“No matter what, it’s still home,” Pressley said. “Sherrie and her sons are my family.”
But this loss will never fade. “We did lose people, so those reminders are multi-faceted,” he said. “It just… it never goes away.”