Earlier this week, I had started writing a column about the progress made in the year since the flooding from Tropical Storm devastated parts of Haywood County. Then, as I started talking to our writers about the stories they were preparing for this week’s edition — one year after the flood — I could tell they had the recovery efforts well covered. 

Hours earlier, Natasha Bright had been trapped atop a bunk bed in a barricaded bedroom with her dogs, her cats and her brother, watching the floodwaters from the furious Pigeon River rising through the floorboards beneath them, but after a long, cold, wet night the waters finally receded so with an armful of children’s clothing and mud squishing between her toes, Bright headed out of Cruso on foot into the pale sunshine looking for a shower.

On Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 17, 2021, the second day of the school year, Haywood County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte announced that school would be closed the following day. “Early and extensive flooding from Tropical Storm Fred” had damaged several roads used for bus routes, and there was uncertainty about scheduled food deliveries to the school system. It would be an optional workday for teachers, not a remote learning day for students.

Ben Wilson recently got around to looking at footage from security cameras at his home captured the day he watched the bloated East Fork of the Pigeon River shoot through his house as he clung to a tree.

In the year since Tropical Storm Fred  ravaged Western North Carolina, emergency managers have been busy working to ensure that next time a wall of water tears through Haywood County, it will exact a much lower cost to life and property.

Handing an old red bandana back and forth to wipe away the tears emerging from their eyes, Wendy and Chuck Rector sit in two plastic Adirondack chairs on what was once a pristine property — a dream home of sorts, truth be told.

Exactly one year after a flash flood killed six people and wreaked havoc in Haywood County, BearWaters Brewing Company is hosting an event to honor the lives lost while also celebrating the strength the community showed amid the disaster. 

As the one-year anniversary of deadly flooding from Tropical Storm Fred approaches, Haywood County officials are still busy chasing down funding that will prevent or reduce the impact of future storms.  

Eleven months to the day after Haywood County awoke to unprecedented flood damage along the Pigeon River resulting from torrential rains the day before, Emergency Services Officer Zack Koonce and Director Travis Donaldson told commissioners they’d secured grant funding to bolster reporting and warning systems.

On Friday, May 27, the day after a big storm dumped inches of rain on Western North Carolina, the air was so clear and the sky so blue it made me think back to the spring of 2020 when Covid shut down the world and for a few weeks the earth’s atmosphere returned 300 years to pre-industrial clarity. I called it Pandemic Blue.