Capturing a Community in Ruin

It was 4 a.m. and my wife and I lay awake as the rain hammered our metal roof. The trees silhouetted against the night sky whipped violently back and forth.

“It’s too much rain,” I kept thinking to myself. Our house was surrounded by large trees on all sides. We were fixated on the reality that at any moment, one of those trees could come crashing through the roof.

By late morning, as the winds and rain subsided, so did my anxiety. But not for long.

I’ve lived in the Asheville region of North Carolina my entire life, and I moved to Swannanoa, a small town just 11 miles east of downtown Asheville, nine years ago. I have been photographing for The New York Times for over 15 years and have covered the effects of climate change in North Carolina in the past.

We spent the first few hours after the storm passed last Friday with a dozen neighbors and chain saws, cutting our way through the downed trees that were blocking our rural gravel road. We thought we would be in the clear once we removed the last one, a three-foot-wide scarlet oak.

As we were feeling triumphant about successfully moving the tree, a few hundred yards away, our neighbors were drowning. Entire neighborhoods were being swept down river.

When we finally made our way closer to the Swannanoa River, which runs through the town, nothing could have prepared me for the scene I took in. My community was in ruin.

All access to my side of the river was blocked by submerged bridges, houses in the middle of the road or demolished highways. I was not in the mind-set to work, but I grabbed my camera before heading out on foot to see who needed help.

With no support from the rest of the world across the river, it was up to neighbors to save each other. One local was flying a drone to find people stranded on roofs, then sending inner tubes to rescue them.

I had a mental list of my loved ones, but days went by before, finally, news trickled in from friends and family. We were starting to understand the scale of the destruction in the only place I’ve ever known. A place famously known as a climate refuge, where people relocate to escape extreme weather.

The first three days after the storm consisted of long conversations with strangers on the street, checking in. “What do you need?” People we never met asked us how we were doing. I barely knew my neighbors before this, and now we have all deeply bonded.

In the frenzy, I had not allowed sorrow to creep in until the second day, when I made my way across the river to the house of one of my best friends’ grandfather — an immigrant who had worked so hard to support his family here and back in Mexico.

I sobbed as I took in the destruction of his home and mechanic shop.