Even When the Creek Rises
For an autistic child in Asheville, Hurricane Helene brought more than floodwaters—it ruptured the carefully constructed routines he depends upon. His mother chronicles their journey through debris, displaced rituals, and Disney movies.
“What planet are we on?” my eleven-year-old says from the back seat.
It is a line from the TV show Space Racers. Like many autistic children, Zachary often communicates using dialogue from his favorite videos. And, in this case, it is apt—we are looking at alien terrain. It is a moonscape: barren, cratered, and dusty. We are in Asheville’s River Arts District, two blocks from our house.
On September 26, 2024, a “predecessor rainfall event” brought torrential rains to Asheville, one day before Hurricane Helene would pass over the area. That morning, I was scheduled to speak to a psychology class at the University of North Carolina at Asheville about parenting a child with high support needs. I had planned to talk about what I had learned about the importance of routine and predictability for autistic children.
Zachary, my youngest child, has a winning grin and a contagious giggle, but changes in his schedule or environment distress him. He will call out over and over for a favorite toy when it is not in its usual spot, tears streaming down his cheeks while I mount a desperate search. But he also radiates a kind of pure joy I wish I could experience just once: he delights in jumping on a trampoline, his arms high above his head, and exhilarates in feeling the gentle whoosh of model trains as he presses his face close to their tracks.
He is a “sensory seeker.” So, when the heavy rains flooded our backyard in a muddy current flowing rapidly downhill, he stomped into the ankle-deep waters, humming to himself as it soaked his sneakers. The afternoon of the next day, once the initial hurricane winds died down, he insisted on swinging on the backyard swing set, pumping his legs and laughing as the trees still swayed around us. Once the wind and rain picked up again, I convinced him to come to the shelter of our porch, where we rolled Play-Doh into snakes and noodles. We hadn’t had electricity since dawn, and I was glad he was distracted from the lack of internet, TV, or light in the house.
That first night, with no internet or cell service, and the roads to our house impassable, we knew nothing of the extent of the hurricane’s damage and imagined power might be restored quickly enough to save the contents of the refrigerator. We could make the three foods Zachary expects to be included with every dinner: rice, broccoli, and chicken nuggets. Zachary’s dad wrapped meat and vegetables in aluminum foil and made a pot of rice with bottled water and heated them on the propane grill.
“What was that?” he would cry. We would have to explain: that was a truck rumbling by, not thunder. That was a siren, but we are all okay.
By the next night, after our neighbors had emerged wide-eyed after hiking through debris to reach the bridge over the river—only to find the bridge itself underwater—we knew it would be a matter of days or weeks, not hours, before our refrigerator would run again. The nuggets, now room temperature, were no longer an option. We grilled the last head of broccoli and took stock of our supply of rice and bottled water.
During the day, Zachary repeated a mantra—“Power is back on. Power is coming back on.”—attempting to will it into existence. We explained that “crews were coming” and would restore our power as soon as they could. We wrote it down as a story we could read to him. We drew illustrations of how the power poles would be fixed.
After five days, Zachary’s mantra had taken on an urgent edge: “Power is coming back on!” I repeated it after him, attempting to reassure him. With an empty refrigerator and little left in our pantry, we took a chance that half a tank of gas could get us to Charlotte and a hotel with working electricity and running water. When we stopped at a gas station in Shelby, the working fuel pumps, refrigerated drinks, and flushable toilets felt like a miracle. A few miles later, we were at last able to procure chicken nuggets, and we saw Zachary’s face light up.
Once we arrived in Charlotte, Zachary began pulling up videos on his phone: the flooding scene from Winnie the Pooh, a violent thunderstorm from The Brave Little Toaster, a twisting sandstorm from Aladdin. He watched these scenes over and over, repeating to himself, “The storm is over.” Zachary has a remarkable memory for movies, and he remembered scenes of natural disasters in just about every animated film he could think of: claps of thunder, crashing waves, violent downpours. He would replay them at top volume, the phone held in his fist close to his ear.
But when he was not playing videos, he would startle at every sound.
“What was that?” he would cry. We would have to explain: that was a truck rumbling by, not thunder. That was a car door slamming, not a tree falling down. That was a siren, but we are all okay.
When we drove back to Asheville, the electronic signs along the highway warned, “DO NOT TRAVEL IN WESTERN NC. LOCAL AND EMERGENCY TRAFFIC ONLY.” We were flanked by bucket trucks, supply trucks, and excavators on flatbeds. “The crews!” we shouted, pointing out the car windows. “Zachary, look! The crews are coming!”
We exited onto Riverside Drive, seeing it for the first time since the hurricane. There were buildings with their walls blown out, upside down cars with collapsed roofs, and shredded sheets of plastic and insulation caught in the branches and roots of fallen trees. The railroad tracks running parallel to the river had buckled and twisted. Pallets and pipes and roofing and kayaks littered the ground.
“Junkyard. Junkyard,” Zachary whispered.
At home, we had to adjust to the new normal: days without cell service, more than a week without power, over two weeks without internet, longer than that without water, and seven and a half weeks before the water in our pipes was potable again. Our familiar routines of handwashing, tooth-brushing, and bathing before bedtime were upended. We devised new methods and protocols: a Deer Park water bottle with a sport cap stood to the side of the bathroom sink so we could squirt safe water onto our hands or toothbrushes.
When the schools reopened, we were ready to return to routine. But schools are noisy places, and Zachary had difficulty focusing when unexpected sounds startled him.
We kept a few of the LED candles I’d bought for jack-o’-lanterns in each room; even after our electricity came back, some of the power lines hung so low that more than once a tall truck knocked them down again. We ate meals off the paper party plates I had bought for our oldest son, who had turned thirteen the week of the hurricane.
While the house was dark, we often stayed outside, watching the military vehicles that carried emergency water supplies roar down our street, listening to the constant buzz of chainsaws, and counting the helicopters we could spot whizzing through the sky.
“What was that?” Zachary would ask, and we would answer as best we could. I was grateful for the more “normal” sounds we could identify. That’s a child yelling at her sister down the street. That’s the neighbor’s lawn mower. Hey, that’s a pileated woodpecker!
He drew on our driveway with chalk: trees, trains, cars. The trees were broken, their trunks jagged lines. The cars had flat tires. The trains frowned and their chalk tracks were mangled. He wrote, “A BIG STORM RAGED ACROSS THE ASHEVILLE”—a modified line from an episode of Thomas and Friends. Then he wrote, “CREWS FIX THE TRACKS.”
When the schools reopened, we were ready to return to routine. But schools are noisy places, and Zachary had difficulty focusing when unexpected sounds startled him. I helped out at the school’s rescheduled book fair and chatted with another parent volunteer.
“Oh, I know your son!” she said. She cocked her head and widened her eyes. “‘What was that sound?’” she imitated, then laughed.
We took a different route to school each day: we detoured around downed trees and power cables, broken asphalt and blocked bridges. Often we were slowed by “disaster tourists” pointing fingers or phones out their car windows as they inched along the road. We were driving to school through the River Arts District when Zachary asked what planet we were on. This had been the home of many artists’ studios and galleries, an area known for its artistic graffiti. Someone had already made art from a pile of dusty cinderblocks, planting a sign on top reading, “HOPE…even when the creek rises.”
The school would distribute donations they had received for hurricane victims: once it was a crate of frozen paninis, another time it was whole frozen turkeys. Elementary schoolers in Utah sent goodie bags of Oreos and stickers. One afternoon, they dispensed boxes and boxes of Frosted Flakes cereal featuring Crocs-shaped marshmallows.
One day when Zachary was at school, I got a call saying he had become very distraught when he saw a custodian toss a plastic water bottle into the trash. I spoke with Zachary on the phone, trying to calm him, telling him that when a water bottle was all done, it was time to recycle it or throw it in the trash.
In December, two and a half months after the hurricane, we had our first snow of the season. The extra weight of the ice and snow caused some limbs to snap off the trees. Zachary clocked every fallen branch.
“Remember Forky from Toy Story 4?” I said. “He liked being trash. Maybe the water bottle wants to be in the trash can.”
Not until I brought him home did I understand what must have happened. It had been a Deer Park water bottle with a sport cap, like the one standing on our sink at home. We had reused and refilled such bottles for weeks, and when we didn’t have running water, or the water was unsafe, they had been a precious resource. There wasn’t a line from a TV show or Disney movie he could have used to explain all this easily.
In December, two and a half months after the hurricane, we had our first snow of the season. The extra weight of the ice and snow caused some limbs to snap off the trees. Zachary clocked every fallen branch.
“Power is back on,” he said, looking at me.
“Power is back on,” I agreed.
“The storm is over,” he said.
“The storm is over,” I repeated.
About the author
Elizabeth Steere teaches and writes about teaching and writing from the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. She pronounces it “Apple-atcha.”