Asheville Tire Shop Manager Recounts Hurricane Helene

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Dennis Berry considers himself one of the lucky ones.

The manager of McCarthy Tire Service’s Asheville, N.C., location is living at the business as his community — like many others across six states from Florida to the Southern Appalachians in Virginia left devastated by Hurricane Helene — rallies to brave the aftermath.

His home in rural Zirconia — about 35 miles south of Asheville — is still standing, but it’s not safe to be there. Water washed out the soil from under the foundation about 10 feet in, and the mountain edge off the back of his home is collapsing.

He didn’t know that when he and his 13-year-old daughter, Samantha, returned home in the eerie darkness around 5 a.m. on Sept. 28 to catch a few hours of much needed shut-eye.

“It’s not dangerous when you don’t know about it,” he quipped recently as he recalled the events of a long weekend that began around 5 a.m. Sept. 27 when they drove through the heavy wind and rain, noting the blown transformers on either side of Interstate 26 casting blue flashes of light into the black sky as they made their way to the shop.

A customer needed access to his dump truck. And when disasters such as a hurricane strike, businesses such as McCarthy Tire become first responders in the sense that power companies, rescue workers and other safety forces depend on them to keep the vehicles crucial to rescue and relief efforts on the road.

“We consider ourselves an emergency service provider,” Scott Estes, regional operations manager for McCarthy Tire Service, said. “If a power company pops a tire, they can’t go fix that power line.”

A cold front ahead of the hurricane that brought severe thunderstorms and flooding spelled trouble. The already saturated ground was unstable, and when the hurricane hit, it “was like throwing gasoline on a fire,” Estes said.

Safety became the priority. “We struggled to make contact with our teammates because cell towers were down. We made sure everyone was safe, nothing else mattered,” he said.

Estes, who oversees 11 McCarthy locations in North and South Carolina, said the company has shifted resources from eastern parts of the states such as Raleigh and Greensboro. Power companies from Ohio and Canada heading to the hurricane-ravaged communities had contacted the family owned and operated commercial tire company to make sure tire service is available if needed.

Estes said the company was still without power, phones and internet at three of its locations — Asheville, and Spartanburg and Easley, S.C. — on Oct 1. Portable generators and compressors from company trucks were powering those shops.

“We are open,” he said, noting “a lot of our customers are in worse shape than we are. We are just trying to support this surge to regroup and recover.” There was no power when Berry and his daughter arrived at the Asheville shop Friday morning, the storm saw to that.

Berry did paperwork and kept a watchful eye. By 9:30 a.m., he decided it wasn’t safe for employees to try to make the trek to work. The roof was leaking, and water was coming in under the mechanical service bay door. A nearby building was losing its siding.

It was time to leave. Berry and his daughter fueled up at a truck stop along U.S. Route 25 that still had power and proceeded to Hendersonville where floodwaters had overtaken a road. For the 19 hours that followed they tried to get home.

Roads were flooded or washed out in some places. Trees and power lines were down. The wreckage of homes and other buildings was scattered everywhere. Vehicles were partially submerged; some were on fire. Food and water were not an easy get.

They stopped to help a family whose car had stalled in high water and witnessed a mudslide surround a Whole Foods store with dirt and gravel up to 8 inches thick.

Berry tried to navigate back roads in his Tundra, but floodwaters and downed power lines forced him to keep changing course. The French Broad River, which flows more than 200 miles from Rosman, N.C., into Tennessee, was overflowing its banks, and it soon became clear the already long day would become a long night. They parked outside the McDonald’s at the same truck stop where they had started. A Sheetz gas station across the street provided a bathroom break.

The father-daughter pair spent hours in their truck watching the devastation. Flooding had them trapped as they tried to drive back into Fletcher. They took a side road hoping to reach higher ground and along the way helped another family get out of their car where a tree had fallen on it. Eventually, they reached a nearby hospital in search of a bathroom, water fountain and cafeteria. “It was like an eerie zombie movie,” Berry recalled.

“The hospital provided snacks to those who came in hungry,” he said. “They did great but we left to make room for others. The whole time we were no more than 20 minutes from home, we just couldn’t get there,” he said.

So, Berry and his daughter took beach chairs from their truck and camped out on a bridge over I-26 in the now late afternoon sun. They traded stories with other storm victims, including a man who had kayaked across the water. As night fell, they headed back to the Sheetz to wait for the water to recede.

At 2 a.m. on Sept. 28, one of the semis at the truck stop parked in four or five feet of water caught fire and they could hear the pops as the truck next to it ignited. Finally, the water was low enough to travel I-26 again. A line of vehicles followed Berry’s Tundra as he pushed through 150 feet of standing water toward home.

In the darkness, he only noticed his driveway was washed out when he arrived around 5 a.m. Daylight revealed the landslide that put his home in peril when Berry awoke about 8:30 that morning. He moved his vehicles to safer spots, grabbed some snacks and headed out with his daughter in a Jeep to Lake Lure where Samantha’s mother lives. A popular summer spot, Lake Lure Beach was gone, replaced by mud. Docks and boats were destroyed and carried away by floodwaters.

“I’m doing better than most,” Berry said. “Families out there need stuff more than I do. Some have lost everything. As soon as you hit that road it’s a reminder.”

The corporate offices of McCarthy Tire organized a drive to collect food, water, clothing, air mattresses, pillows, and other items, sending a truckload of supplies to Flat Rock where they could be distributed since area hotels were either at capacity or had no power.

Many employees opted to stay at the stores rather than shelters to help keep operations on track.

“We’ve really come together as a region and as a company to support what’s going on in Asheville,” Estes said. “At McCarthy we say we’re family, and these are the times we show it.”

The company was continuing to pay employees through the ordeal. Some of the facilities sustained roof damage but overall, the properties survived the storm intact. The Asheville location sits on flat land and is far enough from streams, creeks and rivers, according to Estes, that it avoided flooding.

Estes said his team prepared as much as possible, holding a Sept. 26 conference call with all locations ahead of the hurricane. “Scott’s a rock star,” said Finance Manager Tim Lambert, who wears multiple hats within the Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-headquartered company as a fourth-generation McCarthy family member. “It’s something you can’t train for. You just have to ask yourself, ‘What’s my heart and what’s my mind telling me to do?’ He’s reacting in such a positive manner for these people.”

McCarthy was founded in 1926. Lambert noted his mother, CFO Katie Lambert and her brother, John McCarthy (third generation), weathered the “1972 big flood in our valley. “People have to stand with people and that’s how we get through,” he said.