Mary Garrison and her husband, Fairview Fire Department Battalion Chief Tony Garrison, awoke around 4 a.m. on Sept. 27 to a darkened home with no electricity, torrential rainfall pounding the ground and high winds from Hurricane Helene screaming through their tiny, isolated Craigtown community. 

Tony had always wanted to be a firefighter, from the tender age of four — his mischievous eyes illuminated with the flickering light of the family television that would hopefully deliver those big red trucks, sirens blaring and racing toward danger to save people in distress.

He started volunteering with the fire department as a teenager before he met Mary, who admitted to feeling frustration when his pager would sound off during their dates, pulling him away.

“You kind of adjust to that life,” Mary told The Smoky Mountain News. “By marrying him, I married that part of him as well.”

Shortly after sunrise that Friday morning, Mary drew Tony’s attention to a waterfall in their back yard that didn’t used to be there; it was cascading down the mountain, around the house, into the front yard. As Tony prepared to fire up the generator, Mary heard the sharp crack of a tree snapping, and they both headed for the front door.

“Oh shit,” Tony said, with desperation that still rings in Mary’s head. Then, he said it again.

“All of a sudden, from that mountain across from us, a landslide. It was like water, mud, trees,” Mary recalls. “I have never seen anything like that in my life.”

In that instant, Mary couldn’t have known that she was spending her last precious moments with Tony, the man she’d loved for more than 30 years.

“He didn’t think twice that day,” she said. “He just went. He grabbed his raincoat and out the door he went.”

Mary and their daughter headed out to retrieve their hunting dogs from an outbuilding, while their son suited up to help Tony check on the residents of Craigtown.

Craigtown was established in the 1950s when a man by the surname of Craig bought large swaths of land off Old Fort Road. Over the years, as Craig’s children and grandchildren — Tony’s aunts and uncles and cousins — grew up and started families of their own, the land was sectioned off and given or sold to them, creating an insular community where nearly everyone was related by marriage or blood. Family Christmas gatherings in Craigtown drew nearly 100 people.

As Mary was handling the dogs, Tony ran down the driveway. Joined by his son and a cousin, he had just successfully moved a relative to safety right as the situation escalated dramatically.

“We heard another sound, and there was another layer of trees, water, mud, come streaming down that mountain,” Mary said. “I mean, it was just like a train speeding off there.”

Tony headed back toward the second slide to look for another relative who’d been swept away in his truck, but it was already too late. Tony told his son to run, but they didn’t make it more than five steps before they too were swept away.

“That was the last time I actually saw Tony,” Mary said.

About an hour later, the three men were located. Miraculously, Mary and Tony’s son was alive but had ingested a good amount of mud and was possibly hypothermic. He had to be cut from the tangle of trees, roots and rubble that had enveloped them.

Tony and his cousin weren’t as fortunate. Rescuers found that Tony had died with his arms around his son.

Fairview Fire Department Battalion Chief Tony Garrison was tragically killed on Sept. 27 as he was attempting to rescue a neighbor. Mary Garrison photo

All told, at least three landslides racked the tight-knit Craigtown community and killed 13 people, 11 of them from the extended Craig family.

Six hours after Tony was killed, Mary and her son were evacuated so he could receive medical treatment, but amid all the damage, destruction and death, Mary’s thoughts eventually turned to other members of their immediate family — five snakes, four ferrets, three cats, two dogs and a rabbit — that were still stuck in their largely undamaged home.

Friends and neighbors had taken up care of the animals as Mary and her daughter sought shelter with family, but those friends and neighbors, like Mary, had to focus on their own losses as well.

Eventually, the Garrisons came to grips with a choice no one ever wants to make.

“We made the decision as a family that foster was the right thing for us at the time, because we just were not able to do it ourselves, and we’re not ones to ask for help,” Mary said. “That was really hard. You know you are their primary caretaker, and when you’re not able to care for them, it makes you feel like a failure.”

With an aim toward reclaiming the animals when they were better equipped to care for them, the Garrisons said goodbye to the last semblance of a normality — the pitter-patter of little paws plodding the hallways, the purrs and the woofs and the ever-silent snakes coiled and basking in the warm comforting glow of their pens, the fuzzy ferrets cuddled on Tony’s chest as he relaxed in a recliner watching woodworking videos on YouTube — forever shattered by a hurricane 3,000 feet above sea level.

All the Garrisons’ pets, including Tony’s favorite ferret, Bandit, ended up at Haywood County’s Misfit Mountain, a nonprofit animal rescue group located just outside of Canton owned and operated by Amy McIntosh and her wife, Tara. 

“My former supervisor who now works at East Asheville Family Vet had reached out to me because the veterinarian there that got involved in their case,” said McIntosh, who works part-time as a nursing assistant at Emergency Veterinary Group in Asheville. “She was like, ‘Can you help with this?’ I didn’t know what any of it entailed. Like, I don’t know snakes. I’m not a snake person. But this family just literally lost everything and I’m not saying no to that.”

During the chaos and confusion of the storm, plenty of pets became separated from their families. After the storm, some of the animals had no home to return to, or no owners to reunite with; animal rescue facilities and shelters were offline, leaving few options and highlighting how another form of infrastructure — not transportation infrastructure, not water system infrastructure, not communications infrastructure but rather pet care infrastructure — was stressed to its limits.

“I would say that it’s pretty bad,” McIntosh said. “People are definitely trying to get a grip on everything now. I mean, we’ve had random people reach out from afar needing medical assistance for their animals, just basic stuff. We want to be that bridge, so we help them get medical attention and we took on the financial responsibility. People are out of work, and maybe finances were difficult already before the storm, so it’s just been difficult to navigate.”

Because Misfit Mountain was only lightly damaged during the storm, it ended up being the best option for some, including the Garrisons who lived more than 30 miles distant. McIntosh thinks she took in took in around 20 pets after the storm, even a few pigs.

But Misfit Mountain isn’t a long-term shelter. McIntosh relies on a dedicated network of volunteers to care for animals who become part of Misfit Mountain’s innovative foster program, which is usually focused on finding a safe place for vulnerable pets surrendered by vulnerable people who don’t really want to part with them but have to — the unsheltered, those facing incarceration, those needing in-patient substance abuse rehabilitation or those trying to flee an abusive domestic situation. Misfit Mountain provides free pet food and pet supplies to their volunteers, who keep the animals safe and happy until their owners are ready to reclaim them.

“It is so important to foster animals, to step up and be there for them, because these animals do not have a voice,” said McIntosh. “They do not have a way to speak up for themselves and to ask for help. That is where we come in.”

Nor is Misfit Mountain a veterinary clinic; all but the most basic procedures require advanced care from licensed professionals under proper surgical conditions, but after Helene, finding those services became nearly impossible in light of the complete failure of Asheville’s municipal water system.

“Our primary vet, Open Door Veterinary Care, didn’t have running water, so we were put on a wait list to see when they would get that water,” McIntosh said. “We had all of our spay/neuter surgeries through the ASPCA, but we weren’t able to get spay neuters there either because there was no water.”

Eleanor Sprinkle, vice president of the ASPCA Spay/Neuter Alliance in Asheville, said her group began removing animals from their New Leicester Highway facility days before the storm.

“The buildings themselves fared well. We had some downed trees that covered the parking lots that we had to get removed,” Sprinkle said. “Obviously, water stopped for us and power was out for quite a while, but we have generators for each building, so the at least we had power to those buildings as we were trying to figure out where staff was and if they were okay and if our partners were good.”

For roughly a month, the ASPCA couldn’t perform surgeries — a major problem for an organization that handles about 21,000 animals in any given year. Weeks ago, the ASPCA finally began to ramp up operations again and have recently approached pre-storm levels, but their absence created a substantial backlog for groups like Misfit Mountain.

“We are probably one of the largest providers [of spay/neuter services] so yes, we have multiple partners that we work with and it’s always painful when we have to alter or stop operations,” said Sprinkle. “We had the same effect during COVID.”

To mitigate some of the bottleneck, Sprinkle said they’d utilized a surgical suite available at the Avery Humane Society in Newland, but Avery County had also been hit hard by Helene and is a bit of a drive for people who live in major population centers in Buncombe County, Henderson County or further west, like in Haywood County.

“We didn’t get any flooding this time, which was awesome,” said Windy McKinney, board chair of Sarge’s Animal Rescue Foundation in Waynesville.

McKinney said that historically, Sarge’s Industrial Park Drive location has experienced flooding, but she thinks that a debris cleanup in Richland Creek — the same Richland Creek that submerged Waynesville Recreation Center’s athletic fields and gutted Frog Level just a few miles upstream — spared them this time.

Sarge’s has the capacity for 40 to 50 animals in the summer, when outdoor areas can be utilized, but that shrinks as the weather cools. They stopped taking animals shortly before the storm, McKinney said, and had fosters lined up to take animals as Sarge’s activated evacuation and medication distribution plans.

Thankfully, Sarge’s was besieged not with floodwaters but instead with donations, so McKinney and another board member hopped in a van and began visiting supply distribution hubs around the county, giving away dog food, cat food, cat litter, litter boxes, collars and leashes, crates and food bowls.

“All the things that you don’t think to grab when you’re running out of your house,” McKinney said.

As of Nov. 1, Sarge’s distribution totals were 6,508 pounds of dry dog food, 3,892 pounds of dry cat food, 1,363 pounds of cat litter, 619 cans of wet cat food, 496 cans of wet dog food, 98 boxes of dog treats, 300 puppy pads and 10 crates.

With spay/neuter access from the ASPCA, Asheville Humane Society and other providers extremely limited, McKinney said at one point it became time to transport the 69 animals in their care to other operations that had the capacity to receive them. Sarge’s didn’t see a huge influx of animals after the storm, but did take some from Brother Wolf, which was completely wiped out.

“I was at Brother Wolf the day after the hurricane hit, and I couldn’t even get close to the shelter because there was still so much water in the area,” said Leah Craig Chumbley, executive director. “The shelter had over 12 feet of water in it, and so we lost every material asset that we had.”

The high-water mark from flooding associated with Hurricane Helene at Asheville’s Brother Wolf can be seen well above the animal enclosures. Brother Wolf photo

Chumbley estimates the loss at $1 million. Brother Wolf came away with only a $45,000 check from its insurer.

Animals had already been moved out of Brother Wolf, many to the Humane Society of Charlotte, although some were transferred all the way up to the Massachusetts SPCA.

Brother Wolf previously had a mobile medical unit that provided care across the area, but it was destroyed by flooding. Volunteer veterinarians then staffed a borrowed mobile unit, providing free treatment to animals that needed it.

“We were able to actually give care to over 1,200 animals in the weeks following the storm,” said Chumbley. “We saw animals who had fish hooks in them from being in the flood waters, animals who were sick from consuming the flood waters, animals with broken limbs who had been hurt by falling trees or by being swept away. “

Eventually, that borrowed unit had to go back to its owners, eliminating Brother Wolf’s mobile capacity, which used to account for roughly 1,500 low-cost spay/neuter surgeries each year.

Now, as surgical capacity remains low, Sarge’s pays $150 to Country Lane Animal hospital in Clyde for spay/neuter surgery of animals that are adopted. Sprinkle said the ASPCA charges between $35 and $65, depending on the animal.

Haywood County operates a shelter of its own with a capacity of about 100 animals. Director of Animal Services Howard Martin said they were prepared for the storm, and that the shelter off Jones Cove Road never lost power.

“I came out of Florida, retired back in 2013, and I was over on the east coast, so I’ve been through hurricanes and similar situations,” said Martin, who’s been with Haywood County for about five years. “I’ve just never seen water move this quickly, with such force.”

Although the shelter was closed to the public, they were still able to look after the animals already in their care and helped a temporary (people) shelter at the Armory accommodate the pets that displaced survivors brought with them.

“Coming off the weekend, we started reaching out to the eastern side of the state, who were calling and wanting to help the western side,” Martin said. “And by the middle of that week, we transferred probably 40 animals to a humane rescue.”

But the county shelter doesn’t provide spay/neuter services to the general public, only to animals that have come under the county’s care. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through the Animal Welfare Act of 2005, oversees all licensed shelters in the country, but to provide such services to walk-ins, the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Board would have to approve and associated liability would skyrocket. A related concern is that governments, with near-limitless funding, generally try not to compete against private businesses.

Using funds from the nonprofit Friends of Haywood County Animal Shelter, the Haywood shelter used to utilize about 10 surgical slots a week from the ASPCA in Asheville.

As the surgical backlog slowly clears, the impact lingers. McKinney said the system still isn’t totally caught up from COVID, and like the region’s devastated tourism industry, area shelters lost out on a full month of revenue, plus a full month of potential adoptions and a full month of caring for four-legged friends that so many people consider full members of their family.

“We’ve foreseen, it’s going to be an ongoing problem for a while,” she said.

Solutions

On  Nov. 16, Mary Garrison and her daughter traveled to Misfit Mountain to retrieve their four ferrets, just before they were to return home for the first time since that terrible late September day. The reunion was joyful for all involved, with the ferrets slinking and squirming all over Mary and her daughter, nipping and nuzzling and emitting happy little chuckling barks. 

Ferrets belonging to the Garrison family are heading home after a short stay at Misfit Mountain and a longer stay with two foster families. Cory Vaillancourt photo

Their lives forever changed, the Garrisons know their home and their community will never be the same.

“They have done a lot of work around our home, a lot of cleanup, which is wonderful, but the emptiness is still there,” Mary said. “We’re rebuilding our home by bringing ourselves back, and bringing our animals back.”

That joyful reunion might not have been possible but for the efforts of pet care providers like Misfit Mountain; however, among the important lessons Hurricane Helene has taught is how precarious the whole system is and how next time, it might not be there for people like the Garrisons.

“In a perfect world, we would have enough providers for these services, but there’s not,” Sprinkle said. “Access to veterinary care is a serious problem across the entire United States. There’s just simply not enough veterinarians and not enough technicians to provide the volume that’s needed for animal care. I mean, that’s the issue. That’s the problem.”

Until then, the Garrisons remain thankful for the help provided to the storm’s silent victims.

“Not having to worry about the animals and whether they were okay, whether they were fed, or whether they had a warm place to sleep was a huge blessing for us and I’m so thankful that there are organizations like this that exist for people like me who would never have asked for help,” Mary said. “We were able to focus on ourselves and do what we had to do and to take care of the arrangements for my husband. Now we have to come back home and begin building whatever our new normal looks like.”

You can help

Nearly every pet care organization mentioned in this story relies — some, exclusively — on generous donor support to provide pet care services for our four-legged friends. This holiday season, consider supporting them if you’re able. Visit aspca.org/aspca-spay-neuter-alliance, bwar.org, hcasfriends.org, misfitmountainnc.org or sarges.org to learn more, or to make a tax-deductible donation today.