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| Smashed car on top of trailer...left behind by the river. |
All of the photos in this post were taken in the past week. We are still living in a disaster zone. There are still people in tents. Thousands of people are displaced and hundreds of businesses are still closed. There is still a desperate need for help in our area. However, we keep taking small steps forward. There were 900+ vehicles in the rivers after Helene and now there are 89 vehicles that still need to be removed from the rivers. That is progress. Two bridges and half of a main road have reopened in our city. There are still major issues with travel to Tennessee because the highway is so damaged and unstable. There is still no train service (commercial or passenger), but it is getting closer as they make repairs to the hundreds of miles of tracks. It is about 1.5 hours away now.
Below are two photos of an apartment complex destroyed by the river that is still the same as when the water first receded.
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| Smashed tractor trailers still remain along the road. |
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| Our regional food bank was destroyed. |
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| Manna, our regional food bank |
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| They rebuilt the road on one side of the river, but the entire other side is still in ruins. |
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| No change on this bridge, but the river is looking cleaner and healthier in this section. |
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| Our city's award-winning golf course is in ruins. |
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| Anyone need a fridge? |
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This road reopening means my husband's commute is back to normal, although the traffic lights are run on a generator because there is still no power on that section of road.
Many patches of woods look like this photo below. So many trees are down. We are at great risk for forest fires and there has already been three fires in the neighboring county. |
Rebekah and I spent one day at Biltmore. It was nice to rest our eyes on beauty. The orchid greenhouse was beautiful. Spending some time on the Biltmore Estate was a wonderful reminder of the beauty that our area is so known for. Beauty is always a bit hard for me to see during "stick season" ... what we affectionately call winter here because of the lack of snow. It is all that much harder right now with so many trees down all over the area. Biltmore Estate has worked very hard on their grounds and the progress is impressive.
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| Looking out from the back of Biltmore house |
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| The river was frozen and every adult was embracing their inner child and trying to break the ice with a rock or two...LOL. |
We traveled to Washington, D.C. and Richmond, VA so that Rebekah could audition for Summer Ballet Intensives. She got into both of them and will be spending part of this coming summer with relatives while dancing her heart out. We visited the National Cathedral while we were in Washington, D.C. It was really lovely inside and out. We didn't walk through the gardens because the weather was so cold, but they were impressive from our car even in the dead of winter. I love stained glass windows.
We are so busy on the home front. Rebekah is finding her college workload to be very demanding this semester. Elijah is adjusting to college, too. He is taking four classes in Integrated Computer Machining. He likes it, for the most part, and is getting used to the routine and demand of so much homework. This year feels like a year in which we will be staying close to home. I am planning to open a day care out of our home in a few months for only a couple children. We are planning a small trip this year within a state or two from our home. So much hinges on what happens to my husband's federal government job. With this administration trying to dismantle the government, his job along with 2+ million federal government employees' jobs are very much at risk right now. It is a very shocking and alarming time. Even those who work with veterans, such as my husband, are not safe. Apparently, making America great again means stomping on the least of us. We would be wise to remember and care for the least of us. Mathew 25:40.
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| Our cats are so silly. A game of chase resulted in one cat getting stuck in the fruit bowl. |
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| Elijah's hair is getting so long. He is enjoying the cascading curls. |
Blessings, Dawn
