Family finally regains power after 3+ months following Hurricane Helene

BURNSVILLE, N.C. -- After more than three and a half months, a family on 19W, northwest of Burnsville, can turn their generator off.

French Broad Electric Membership Corporation (FBEMC) energized the Merz family home on Sunday, Jan. 26.

"The poles used to be along the edge of the river and until they had the road far enough along to get new poles in, we couldn't get any power, there was no way to get it to us," Diane Merz said. "Every pole, I think on the entire road was taken down."

Merz moved with her husband to a picturesque home beside the Cane River 25 years ago.

She would sit on her sprawling porch and photograph wildlife that lived peacefully across the river.

"We got eagles and osprey and herons and deer over there in the kudzu, that was all kudzu greenery over on the other side," Merz said. "It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful."

That all changed in late September when Helene hit and when the river rose.

"Now there's nothing, we've got one tree left for them (birds) to sit in if they come back," Merz said. "They say it was a one-in-1,000 storm, I hope they're right. A 1,000-year storm."

The Yancey County homeowner said their house sits 40 to 50 feet above the water on a normal day, but after the storm, the water rushed up to within seven feet of their fence line.

"There was no road here," she said. "The road in front of our home all the way down, probably to where the road bends, was gone. There was no road. The river had moved over and the river was directly below us."

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When the water receded, all that remained was jagged rock and tangled asphalt.

There wasn't a powerline left. The Merz family sat in the dark for more than a week.

"We were trapped here, there was no way in or out," Merz said.

She was told it could be a year before the lights came back on and if not for the goodwill of perfect strangers delivering them a generator, who knows how long it would have been.

"They didn't wait until we had road, they came over the rocks and up the side of the hill on a ladder and it was amazing to watch," Merz said. "People would donate fuel, it would be down at the church a mile away and he would have to take the ATV and go down and get cans of gas and come back, fill the generator and this was every couple of days he was running for gas."

Months passed and they could only get out on their four-wheeler, but a road eventually started to take form again.

Then, as Merz puts it, the "cavalry" showed up.

The FBEMC put a new power pole along the Cane River, they thread the line through a tree on their property and into their home.

"They might have bushwhacked a line through the woods if there were 20 houses here to power, but for one person it wasn't financially or physically feasible to go to that trouble for one home and we understood that," Merz said.

Her husband is a former lineman with a phone company so they never called FBEMC because they knew crews would show up when it was safe.

According to FBEMC CEO Jeff Loven, all customers are back with power now.

"Little by little I'm feeling better about it and I'm hopeful that we will get the help we need and it will return to the way it used to look in my lifetime, I hope, I hope, that's all we can do is hope," Merz said.

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