Students in Helene-ravaged Buncombe County return to school a month after mass devastation

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — One month after Hurricane Helene destroyed mountain towns, swept away homes and upended countless lives here, thousands of Buncombe County’s students returned to school Friday.

Students were hopeful and said it was a joyous occasion to be able to reconnect with friends and see some normalcy return to their lives after the storm brought catastrophic flooding and record-breaking rain to some parts of western North Carolina. The district has more than 22,000 students and 45 schools, according to Rob Jackson, the superintendent of Buncombe County Schools.

Caleb Freeman, a senior at A.C. Reynolds High School, said he was looking forward to being “around people again” after feeling “pretty lonely and kind of helpless.”

Helene washed away roads and toppled thousands of trees, leaving many isolated, especially as the storm cut off internet and cell signal for weeks for some.

Freeman said it’s been difficult to hear what some in his community are going through.

“It’s great to be able to be with them instead,” he said.

On Thursday, dozens of students in the school’s marching band played songs from the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and marched in formations ahead of Friday night’s football game — the first home game since Helene hit. Students are anticipating a big turnout and a lot of emotions.

“To be able to come back and perform with everybody, it lifted me up a lot,” said Freeman, who plays percussion in the band. 

Rawleigh Hall, a senior who is on the school’s football team, said Friday afternoon that there was “a lot of happiness and some happy tears today” as the first day back was coming to an end.

“Today everybody was all happy because they got to be back and be able to see everybody and just be together again. It was a good day,” Hall said.

He was elated to be reunited with his football teammates, who he said “are like my brothers.”

“Getting back and being able to play, nothing feels better than that,” he said.

Zoe Love, a senior who plays the trombone, said because she lacked cell signal after the storm, she didn’t know the magnitude of the destruction for the first few days.

“Then I just started looking at photos of the city that I’ve lived in my whole life just completely destroyed,” she said.

Love said she was dealing with the destruction while balancing college applications that have a Nov. 1 deadline and it felt like “a rush” to finish things up.

The senior said she is totally ready to go back to school and that it’s been “weird being away from all of my friends and all the people who I know.” 

“Coming back to marching band has helped that normalcy kind of settle in, but I think being back in school will definitely make everything feel a little bit more normal,” she said.

Jackson, the district superintendent, said he was “beyond excited to welcome our students” back to school Friday and that “it’s also a relief, because we worry about our students, particularly when they’re not with us, and we’ve had difficulty contacting them because of cellphone outages and internet outages and power outages.”

Jackson said that while seven of its schools were damaged, one of the biggest challenges has been the need to “remap the entire county” for its bus drivers.

“This is one of the largest counties in North Carolina; because we had bridges that were washed out, roads that were undercut, trees that fell all across Buncombe County, and so when we start school tomorrow, our bus routes will look very different,” he said Thursday. “There will be many students who are getting onto the school bus at a community stop because our buses cannot safely travel into their neighborhoods or where they live. That’ll be an ongoing challenge as the road infrastructure continues to be under repair for some amount of time.”

Jackson said the district will be working individually with students to meet their needs as some still do not have power, water or internet access at home.

The goal with reopening Friday was “to give our students the opportunity to simply be together with their friends, to be together with their teachers, to ensure that they have the opportunity to talk with someone if they’d like to, to tell the story of the trauma that they’ve experienced or they’ve witnessed,” Jackson said.

After a few days to get readjusted, the school will pivot back into its academic work, and the district has extended the semester through late January.

Jaime Canton, the father of a fourth grade and a ninth grade student, said Friday morning that “it’s a little nerve-wracking” for the children to be going back to school when there are so many students who have experienced massive loss.

“But I do think they’re doing everything they can to support parents and the community,” he said of the district as he drove his car with his children in it to a nearby bus stop.

“With all of the infrastructure damage around, it’s hard to know what the bus route looks like and what the bus drivers are going to have to deal with,” he said, adding that he would be giving them “grace and space.”

Liz Tallent, the mother of two second graders and one sixth grader, said her children were excited to return to school and that parents wanted to support teachers in the best ways they can.

“I think we’re all ready for some structure, some normality to be back as much as possible,” she said. “I think everyone’s probably in different degrees of shock. It’ll take us all a long time to process what this means.”

Throughout this catastrophic change in her community, Tallent said, “the silver lining has certainly been how many people have dropped what they normally do to jump in and help however they could.”

Kathy Park reported from Asheville, and Daniella Silva from New York.