Her ministry helped the homeless in her city in North Carolina. Now she lives among them

SWANNANOA, N.C. — Formerly stormThe natural beauty of the place was a source of comfort and peace for Cindy Riley, and its rivers and streams were part of what motivated her to return home after decades of absence.

Although Swannanoa may not exist like rich how nearby Asheville In other nearby towns, she said, Riley found a sense of purpose by helping homeless and poor mothers, even if some of their interactions were brief or the work itself brought a sense of mistrust and fear in the broader community.

Trained as a disaster relief chaplain, Riley never dreamed that she would one day face a life crisis like the ones she helped her clients overcome.

Then flood waters came.

It’s been exactly a month since Hurricane Helen. caused a flood in western North Carolina, swelling rivers and dams until the waters burst from their banks with such terrifying force that they swept away everything in their path. At least 98 people died alone in the state. For many Swannanoans, the devastation remains apocalyptic.

Memories of the storm are still frighten Riley. How rivulets of water began to snake under her front door while she and her husband drank morning tea. How it only took a few minutes for the flood to break down her garage door and flood her home.

“A nice little creek that you sit next to just to have a quiet day… suddenly it turns into a ferocious river that takes over the entire area,” she said. “There was no way out and no warning.”

“This land that I love seems as if it has turned its back on me and betrayed me.”

Riley soon found herself in an emergency situation not unlike those she had helped many women in Swannanoa: no home, no resources, no idea what would happen next.

The destruction will certainly test her survival skills. But it would also teach her things she could never have imagined, even in all the years she’d spent with her. Christian Ministry in the Swannanoa Valley.

It would open her eyes to how outsiders see those going through a crisis and how exhausting it can be to go through it.

Through Helen’s experience and the suffering that still lingers in her wake, Riley will come to see the community she serves in a way she never could before the floods. She finally truly “got it.”

Makenzie Happe/CNN via CNN Newsource

‘Swanna-nowhere’

Swannanoa has long had a reputation for being an overlooked town. About 18% of the residents live below the poverty line, significantly higher than the national rate of 11%. Riley, who was born and raised in the village of just over 5,000 people, said living here had always been difficult.

“It was even nicknamed ‘Swannah Nowhere,’” she said, “because no one wanted to live there.”

For almost 50 years the company Christian Ministry in the Swannanoa Valley provided food, clothing and direct financial assistance to those who needed it most. Several years ago, ministry director Kevin Bates appointed Riley to head the ministry. Hope for tomorrow – An 18-month transitional housing program for low-income mothers – as part of a broader mission.

The work is largely donor-funded, and in the past ministry staff have had to “fight tooth and nail” for resources such as tents, generators and stoves to distribute to the homeless, Bates reminded CNN.

“We serve about 1 out of every 5 people living in the Swannanoa Valley throughout the year,” he said. “Before the hurricane, that number was growing exponentially.”

When Helen’s streams pushed their little stream over your banks Last month, Riley and her husband Dennis grabbed what they could and fled in their SUV. She recalls that as they left the garage, neighbors shouted at them to hurry up:

Water poured into the exhaust pipe.

“I think we got out milliseconds before the car died,” Riley said.

Others faced even worse situations. One neighbor was stuck on her porch, surrounded by rust-colored water, and soon was “literally wearing a sheet tied around her because she was so cold,” Riley said.

The floodwaters had inundated their street, turning trees into islands and leaving cars bobbing in several feet of water.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Black Mountain, Bates watched from his daughter’s bedroom window as the Swannanoa River rose nearly 20 feet high and transported cars and trees downstream towards the city. His thoughts rushed to low income communities in the floodplains along the river banks and with friends like Cindy and Dennis.

“I knew if I saw that kind of destruction and that kind of volume of water high up in the watershed,” he said, “Swannanoa would be hit — and hit hard.”

“It was like a ghost town.”

The Helen flood left half of the Riley area underwater. She recalls that she and her husband helped move all their neighbors, “from the youngest to the oldest,” to higher ground. A woman, wrapped in a sheet for warmth, was also rescued. Then the scenario changed, and the couple was taken in by neighbors, fed and given a place to stay.

When they finally managed to get out, they headed straight to a place they knew would be a refuge: a Christian ministry in the Swannanoa Valley.

“I knew if we got to SVCM, we could find supplies and everything would be OK,” Riley said. “And I knew that Hope for Tomorrow would provide a shelter for anyone in our community or anywhere else who might need it.”

But what they saw along the way was devastating.

Raging water split someone’s mobile home in half, forcing Riley and her husband to drive through its ruins.

Much worse, she recalls, was the silence.

“There are no people around, just destruction. It was like a ghost town.”

In those first days after the hurricane, more than a million people lost power. Residents relied on each other like the rugged terrain of the Appalachians. complex efforts deliver aid to the most affected areas. Countless people have gone missing state records show – from 26 still lost weeks later.

When Riley and her husband finally made it to the service, Bates didn’t hesitate to invite them to stay at Hope for Tomorrow. Riley’s neighbor, who was stuck in a sheet on her porch, moved into the apartment next door.

Riley soon wrote a journal entry describing how her new home had already changed her perspective: “I now live in an apartment no bigger than a barracks with other people who have been made homeless by Helen or some other misfortune.”

“In this season, I am learning that home is not a structure, but a way of life and a community.”

Meanwhile, other positive aspects emerged.

“There was suddenly an influx” of the kind of resources and items Bates once asked for, he recalls, as donations poured into North Carolina Creek.

Volunteers came from all over the country to start search and rescue missions, cook free foodhelp pure dirt and garbage from houses and otherwise suggest moral and emotional support for a community suddenly overwhelmed by shortages – and growing grief.

“It was like people showed their humanity and people opened up to each other as people again,” Bates said.

Before she could fully comprehend how her own life was developing, Riley, too, began adding one cup of water at a time.

“It gave me hope that where I work, where I go to serve every day, we can do something to help our community,” she said.

But, of course, now she, too, was among those in need.

“This man was just trying to survive.”

Riley said that from the depths of her own devastation, she came to understand – perhaps for the first time in a career dedicated to serving the least of us – the plight of those with no permanent address, no plan for the next meal, no promise of morning tea.

“Whether we have a home or not, none of that is an issue anymore,” she said. “We were all on the same playing field and saw each other as equals, worthy of care and dignity in a way I had never seen.”

For all the safety and comfort she found at Swannanoa Valley Christian Ministries and Hope for Tomorrow, Riley said the experience was an eye-opener.

Before Helen came along, she said, Riley resented when some clients were demanding and considered them a bit ungrateful. Now she finds herself doing the same thing, and her expectations of how people should behave in the midst of a crisis have changed.

“I think most of us feel the same way, I used to have a lot of judgments about someone’s attitude or different things, I’m like, ‘Oh, I get it… This person was just trying to survive.’ They didn’t have a chance to say it kindly. They did their best to just say what they needed to say,” she said.

Riley is also filled with a newfound sympathy for everyone clinging to a semblance of normalcy when their world is turned upside down.

“I’ve noticed that everything we think is comforting to this person may not be,” she said. “It’s impossible to know without asking the question: “Do you know what calms you down and makes you feel safe?” We want to make sure you have it.”

But after Helen, things may never return to normal. Swannanoa now has sand dunes. Piles of silt, dirt and debris have turned this once green valley into “open fields of cracked mud,” Bates said.

The devastation was difficult to describe, as was the flood’s impact on those already struggling, he said. FEMA estimates that more than $100 million in individual assistance has been approved for North Carolina alone.

“We could say recovery is a marathon, but most people give up after the first mile,” Bates said.

“This is an opportunity for us as a community to address some of these broader, systemic social issues and take a hard look in the mirror and say, ‘Why are we being generous right now when we may not have been as generous before?’

Holding sorrow and joy together

As Swannanoa prepares to rebuild, Bates continues to reflect on a biblical passage in which Jewish exiles return and begin to rebuild their temple.

As they work, “the two sounds of mourning and joy merge together and create one sound,” he said.

“There is no consensus on which is best,” Bates explained. “They both stick together. So creating a space where we can embrace both grief and joy is one of our goals and one of our hopes for our community.”

Riley and her husband were able to salvage a few pots and cups from the house, but nothing major. Now, like many other Western North Carolinians, they are beginning the slow process of rebuilding the lives they led just a month ago, thanks in large part to donations and support from their community.

As Riley begins to recover, the parallel emotions—grief and hope—set forth in the ancient biblical tale also reflect her own twin lessons learned from Helen.

“I even wondered if this was part of my life’s journey so that I could learn it better and be better equipped to help other people,” she said.

“I hope so.”