Helene – A Different Kind of Hell in Appalachia

Hel – The Goddess of the Underworld in Norse Mythology.

As of this week, and at the time of the posting of this ‘article’ – all mountain pirates in the Appalachian region are safe and accounted for via phone, text or email.  In the words of one of our crew “I can say that all of this was expected.”  By that, he means, how Asheville reacted, or best, how Asheville didn’t act.

The years of Asheville’s mismanagement of the river system, water systems and ill planned development in the River Arts District took it’s toll.  Thankfully, a planned development of 240 ‘high density’ apartments will not take place.  Asheville was growing too fast – Mother Nature said ‘no’ – as she often does.  If the mayor of Asheville, Ester Manheimer, a Belgian born real estate lawyer, had her way, the damage would have been worse – not by design, but by the lack of prudent planning.  On her own, she’s not a bad person.  However, her constant support of development along the river added to the tragedy we now know as Helene.  Industrial development along the river – a river well known for ‘going off the reservation’ every 100 years – had created little time bombs of toxic waste that would later pollute the river system and damn our home city of Marshall, NC to become a Superfund site.  With her sidekick Brownie Newman, the County Commissioner for Business Development, they made sure every town down stream of Asheville suffered the greatest ecological damage possible.  Again, both Ester and Brownie are essentially good people – if you met them, you would like them – however their pursuit of ‘growth’ and money caused plenty of suffering in Appalachian region along the French Broad.

Harsh? Maybe.  But the French Broad is our river.  The section most affected, Section 9, is our section.  Letting them off the hook would irresponsible.  The mountain folk, animals and fish are all going to suffer due to the actions of specifically these two people.  As of right now, a PVC plant in Woodfin is bleeding into the river.  So yeah, someone needs to say something about the characters that caused additional suffering.

So, what did we do during all of this?

1. The Appalachian Mountain Pirates did the following;
2. Provided security against looters and the Asheville gangs that raided smaller Appalachian towns
3. Provided arms and ammunition to the locals that needed to protect their property
4. We provided training to those that needed to understand how best to protect their property
5. We cleared roads from Arden to Marshall
6. We stood guard at night to protect smaller mountain communties from Ashevilles gangs
7. We were on the ground to provide communications for families affected by Helene
8. We acted as first responders when both the Buncombe and Madision County deputies and EMS were stressed beyond all belief.
9. We provided internet access when Charter Spectrum couldn’t pull it’s head out of it’s collective ass.
10. We provided clean, filtered water for folks that needed it.
11. We provided hot showers to the community.
12. We provided electricity via our generators.
13. We gave out booze, because booze helps people adapt to shit-hit-the-fan moments.
14. We ran HAM coms and gave reports to W4MOE
15. We checked on people’s houses while they were out of town
16. We did everything that FEMA was supposed to fucking do, and didn’t.
17. We passed on information to those that needed to know ‘what was going on’ and helped them contact their loved ones.
18. We helped out Appalachia because that is what Appalachian Mountain Pirates train, practice for and quite frankly, fucking do.

What we didn’t do was go into the water to look for bodies, even when we were asked.  The reason was simple, almost ever mountain pirate captain was trained in NBC.  NBC simply is a military acronym for Nuclear, Biological and Chermical.  While we are the masters of French Broad, we were on the ground in Marshall when many first responders were receiving chemical burns from the mud alone along the river’s banks.  Since it was obvious that river operations were possibly going to cause health issues to the Pirates, the decision about how to assist with the other SAR groups was made.  That decision was not to put the Mountain Pirates in harms way.  This decision came from two of our best, one with direct experience from the United States Army Special Forces and the other, one of our veteran members that trained at Ft. Benning’s NBC proving grounds.  Both members have experience in search and rescue.  We have the boats, gear and experience – but we were not able to put our people into the toxic environment that was created by the Asheville leadership’s mismanagement.

As a Captain, I will not put my group into harms way.  The Captains rarely make unanimous decisions.  This was a unanimous decision.

While Asheville gets all the attention, it has to be said, as tonight – thousands of real Appalachian people are cut off from their friends and families.  As Milton approaches, our coast Floridian Pirates are in danger.  My hope is that people remember these days and hold those accountable that could have done more, but didn’t.

Long Live Appalachia – God Bless the Brothers of Sisters of the Appalachian Mountain Piracy – your hard work during this time does not go unnoticed.

Cheers,

Captain Balls