(The Center Square) – On the morning before Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina in late September of 2024, Drake Fowler was already expecting trouble with the weather ahead.
The 434 acres of public forests and gardens had already been hit with 10 inches of rain the night before the hurricane hit, remembered the executive director of the North Carolina Arboretum.
“I was on the property at 6:30 that morning and saw that Bent Creek, which runs through the arboreum, was already basically at flood stage,” Fowler told TCS.
The arboreum was closed for the day and a safety protocol activated. Chainsaws were filled with fuel.
The next morning, Fowler and other employees had to go by foot into the arboretum, not knowing what kind of damage they would find as trees through the area were knocked down by Helene causing widespread power outages and other damage.
The damage at the arboretum, which is affiliated with the North Carolina University System, was massive.
“We lost 10,000 trees,” said Fowler. “We lost almost every significant tree in about 80 acres.”
The recovery effort began immediately, with the biggest challenge removing the fallen trees.
“Our horticulture staff, they all came in, even though they had issues at their own houses,” Fowler said.
The first task was to clear the roads leading to the Bent Creek community so that residents could get in and out. Community members were cheering at the site of arboretum staff members as they arrived with chainsaws.
Even with a staff of professionals and all the right equipment and additional help from the university system, the arboretum still has fallen trees on the ground more than a year after the storm. Approximately 40% of the downed trees are still there, said Fowler.
And this is the 69th week of recovery from what is arguably the state’s worst natural disaster.
It helped that the arboretum is on land leased from the federal government, which made it faster to get assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The arboretum needed to get roads cleared before Nov. 15 when its winter annual light show was scheduled.
A nearby church helped with meals for the workers clearing the debris.
“The winter light show is good for the community, but it’s also our biggest fundraiser,” Fowler said. “I told President Peter Hans, ‘If we don’t have this, I’m going to go bankrupt pretty quick.’”
Hans is president of the UNC System.
About 20% of the arboretum’s funding is from the state of North Carolina while the remainder is from donors, members and events such as weddings. The light show went on as scheduled, not the best ever in terms of the fundraising, but “It was one less thing cancelled in the community,” Fowler said.
“It was a pretty special thing to get it up and going 45 days after the hurricane hit,” said Fowler.
The long-term challenge remains replacing the thousands and thousands of trees that were lost in the storm.
The nonprofit group EcoForesters plans to develop a replanting plan for the 80 acres damaged by Helene.
“The thought is you don’t have to put it back exactly the way it came out,” Fowler said. “There’s some interesting ecologies that we could replant.”
For example, shortleaf pines could be reintroduced to the forest and even the American chestnut, which once flourished in the Eastern United States but was decimated by a blight.
“We never would have cleared land to work with the Chestnut Foundation to plant some,” Fowler said.
“But now that we do have it, why not?”
