Outside Mission emergency room, families await word on loved ones
ASHEVILLE – Outside the emergency room at HCA Healthcare’s Mission Hospital in Asheville Sept. 29, loved ones waited for word on family members being treated inside, days after Tropical Storm Helene wreaked havoc across Western North Carolina, killing at least 10 people in Buncombe County and five in Henderson County.
Shawn Hensley, 47, of Black Mountain, told the Citizen Times his 65-year-old mother arrived at the hospital the night before because she was running low on oxygen.
Hensley said Helene, which dumped torrents of rain into already swollen rivers and delivered high winds that brought down trees and power lines, devasted Black Mountain, east of Asheville. Multiple roadways were washed out, according to Hensley, and neighbors had to chainsaw a tree blocking his car so he could get out.
“It looks like Mother Nature just stomped all over that little town,” Hensley said. “It’s just destruction everywhere you look.”
There have been 30 confirmed deaths in Buncombe County as a result of Tropical Storm Helene, Quentin Miller, Buncombe County’s sheriff, said at a Sept. 29, 4 p.m. briefing with city and county officials.
“Our hearts are broken with this news and we ask that folks give our community the space and time to grieve this incredible loss,” Miller said.
On Sept. 29, Hensley waited in a long line for fuel at the Shell gas station on Merrimon Avenue just north of downtown, he said. But after two hours, his Hyundai Elantra ran out of gas.
So, he abandoned it and walked the two miles to Mission Hospital Sunday morning to check on his mother. When he arrived, Hensley was told his mother would be discharged around 3 p.m. He said he would just wait there for the next four hours.
Hopefully, he would find her, he said.
‘Patients are doubled up in ER rooms’
According to Hannah Drummond, a registered nurse at Mission, the hospital was forced to rely on a back-up generator for power until 12:30 a.m. Sept. 29.
“Patients are doubled up in ER rooms,” Drummond said. “The waiting room has been overflowing – patients are in all the hallways.”
Outside the emergency room before noon Sept. 29, a Mission nurse embraced two women looking for updates on family members.
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Other nurses were escorting patients without life-threatening conditions out past rapid deployments tents, directing them to a medical emergency shelter Buncombe County set up for medically vulnerable people on the campus AB-Tech Community College.
One of those patients, Micah Huffman, 52, said he arrived at Mission around 4 a.m. this morning. Huffman told the Citizen Times he has dystonia, a “twisting disorder” that causes muscles spasms. Though HCA security provided directions, Huffman still wasn’t sure where to go.
Struggling to speak as he walked alongside a Citizen Times reporter, Huffman, who lives in downtown Asheville, said he began vomiting Sept. 28 and was transported to Mission by an out-of-town healthcare provider helping with response efforts following Helene.
Outside the shelter, Matt Warren, 60, a resident at ABCCM’s Veterans Restoration Quarter, a housing facility for male veterans, told the Citizen Times he arrived at the shelter on Sept. 27 after first being evacuated to another shelter set up by the City of Asheville at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in downtown.
That morning, Asheville Rapid Transit buses picked up residents from the housing facility near the Swannanoa River in East Asheville, where Buncombe County officials ordered a mandatory evacuation in the early morning hours of Sept. 27. More than 200 people were evacuated from the housing facility, according to Tim McElyea, ABCCM’s homeless services director.
Warren, who said he has diabetes, said drinking water and food is available at A-B Tech’s emergency shelter, but there’s no water to flush toilets.
“It absolutely smells,” Warren said. “It smells horrendous.”
More:Where to report missing loved ones, seek reunion in Western NC after Helene floods
More:Western North Carolina floods: 10 confirmed deaths in Buncombe County from Helene; still no water distribution sites
Jacob Biba is the county watchdog reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times. Reach him at [email protected]
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