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The above photo: The Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, North Carolina, suffered significant water damage after Hurricane Helene on Sept. 28, 2024, requiring an extensive remediation and renovation process to restore and protect the historic 1896 structure. It isn’t expected to be open for worship until late 2026. Photo: Facebook

[Episcopal News Service] When Hurricane Helene slammed into the Diocese of Western North Carolina on Sept. 28, 2024, torrential rains sent swollen rivers down the mountains, displacing people from their homes, leveling trees and flooding parts of the city of Asheville.

In the nine months since then, much work remains, Bishop José A. McLoughlin said in a video posted on a new section of the diocesan website devoted to disaster recovery.

“Unfortunately, the total damages to our churches and conference centers amount to millions,” he noted, “with 23 churches reporting damage, our Cathedral of All Souls uninhabitable, and both of our conference centers deeply impacted.”

So far, thanks to individual donations and grants from Episcopal Relief & Development, the diocese has disbursed $440,000 for emergency needs, including food and housing, support churches, and to help with community and household recovery efforts.

Bat Cave, an unincorporated community about 20 miles from Asheville, suffered extensive damage as did the hills that surround it. The Rev. John Roberts had been rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in Bat Cave for about nine months when rain swelled the rivers that converge at the bottom of the Hickory Nut Gorge near the church. While the church saw damage – a flooded basement and hundreds of trees on its property torn down – Roberts told Episcopal News Service the real damage has been in the lives of the people who live there.

Of the 60 families who were members before Helene, 12 of them lost everything, including their homes. All the others suffered damage of some kind, even if it was the loss of contents of refrigerators and freezers. A third of the congregation moved away, some to live with children elsewhere.

So far none of his parishioners who lost homes have received any insurance payments. “People are paying mortgages on homes that don’t exist,” he said. “And for a lot of people, their land is gone,” washed away when the riverbed swelled to four times its usual size or racing water eroded areas on steep slopes.

“For some, not only is their home gone, but they don’t even have land they can sell or rebuild.”

Some without insurance have received payments of up to $40,000 from FEMA, but Roberts said those payments seem to be haphazard – some receive them, and others don’t. Beyond the finances, some people in the area, including members of the church, still don’t have water service, leaving them without toilet or bathing facilities.

Roberts and his family were evacuated to Charlotte about five days after the storm hit, when help finally could reach them. It was only when he got there, with access to cell phone and internet service, that he was able to find out if his congregation had survived. They all did. After his family returned home, Roberts hiked four miles from a drivable road down the hill on Oct. 14 to discover that the church was standing.

Even without power – that took another month to come back – the church became a center where people began to help rebuild. He said Amish men from Pennsylvania came to mill the fallen trees into lumber that they then used to build sheds. They slept in the church by stringing hammocks from the rafters. Because the church used water from a well, there were usable bathrooms available.

When power was restored, pumps were able to get all the water out of the church basement, which Roberts described as “a swimming pool of water.” To everyone’s surprise, there was no damage.

But even with power restored, the church still couldn’t open for worship because parishioners couldn’t get there — the main road had been badly damaged, with parts of it washed away. Rescue workers were able to navigate a way to the church property, which became a center for recovery efforts. The church’s old rectory, which had been converted to office space, was used to house people, with offices becoming bedrooms again. With water available, the church’s washer and dryer were in frequent use.

The church was able to host in-person services in the church on Thanksgiving and Christmas and finally was able to welcome parishioners back to weekly Sunday worship on Feb. 23.

Right after the storm, the county began building a temporary road between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock, about three miles away, to replace the one that had washed out. Roberts struck a deal with the county to allow parishioners to pass through multiple barricades designed to keep people out of the construction area, since they were only travelling a portion of the way. The code word “Transfiguration” let them through to reach the church, he said.

The temporary road fully opened on June 23.

Today the former woods – now covered in gravel thanks to a county grant – is the home of a community relief hub that provides three meals every day, household items and rebuilding supplies, and portable toilets.

One unexpected blessing of all this, Roberts said, is that some people who previously had been unfamiliar with the church now are attending services. Many of them “don’t know what ‘Episcopal’ is,” he said, but they know “that we offered help and shelter and stability, and folks come to church because of it.”

A long recovery time for Asheville’s Cathedral of All Souls

An image from a video taken by the Very Rev. Sarah Hurlbert shows floodwater rushing around and through the Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, North Carolina, on Sept. 28, 2024. Photo: Facebook screenshot

One of the notable images from the day Helene hit was of water from the swollen Swannanoa River running through the streets of Asheville and up to the altar of the Cathedral of All Souls. It was taken from dry ground a block away by the Very Rev. Sarah Hurlbert, the cathedral’s dean. The parish hall fared even worse – water filled that building to its roof.

“We had two basements absolutely flooded,” Hurlbert told ENS. “And when the waters receded, there was so much mud and silt. It took them two weeks just to remove the mud and clean the basements.”

Once the water receded, Hurlbert said they began recovering items, including beloved kneelers that had their needlepoint tops removed before mold could begin to grow. But the recovery phase is taking a long time, she said, in part because the building is an historic property and requires extra care at every step.

A remediation company worked to remove all the moisture from the building and clean every surface, but because the church hasn’t seen flooding like this before – the highest water ever got in the past was the top outside step – every step in the recovery is a new one.

The church was built in 1896 at the behest of George Vanderbilt, a grandson of industrialist and railroad owner Cornelius Vanderbilt. Hurlbert said the Vanderbilt family were all Episcopalians, but some were more active than others.

George was a devoted churchman, she said, and along with his wife Edith arranged for the construction of the church. He was building Biltmore, his 250-room estate — the largest American house ever built – in Asheville with architect Richard Morris Hunt, and he wanted a place to worship.

“He didn’t do what so many other families did at the time, build a little chapel on their grounds and pay for a priest to be there,” Hurlbert said. “He wanted a neighborhood church.” A neighborhood, known as Biltmore Village, had sprung up near the estate, where craftsmen like brickmakers, carpenters and masons who were constructing the home lived.
Some of them were Black men who had moved to the area after the Civil War, looking to make a life for themselves far from the Southern plantations where they had been enslaved, Hurlbert said. Others were immigrants from Europe.

When the church opened, Vanderbilt made sure that there was a section reserved in the church for all of them. The church also had an integrated Sunday school from its beginning, she said.

As the only surviving Hunt-designed church in the world, the cathedral has exercised care in deciding who will tackle the renovations. Finding the right architectural firm took months, she said.

And while the brick church and parish hall will retain their original shape and materials, the cathedral intends to “build back for ministry capacity,” Hurlbert said. This will include an updated kitchen and Sunday school rooms, “so we can be active and ministering all week long, partnering with feeding ministries and childcare, doing everything we can to be an asset to the community,” Hurlbert said.

But all this will take time. Some items still are impacted by a backlog that began during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, as she was told it could take 14 months for a new heating and air conditioning system to arrive. Adding to that is that 26 counties in the area were devastated by the hurricane, “and local contractors are up to their eyeballs now.”

Hurlbert said she feels like the Grinch who stole Christmas when people ask her when the congregation can be back in its building. She is hoping that will happen by Christmas 2026.

In the meantime, the congregation is worshiping at St. George’s Episcopal Church in west Asheville, which houses a Montessori school and Food Connection Asheville, a nonprofit that repurposes leftover food from restaurants to provide meals for people in need.

St. George’s now hosts a Sunday evening gathering, so All Souls members fill the nave on Sunday mornings. Getting there also has introduced them to a neighborhood many might not have seen much of before.

Before the hurricane, the cathedral had an average Sunday attendance of about 250. That number has changed a bit since moving to St. George’s, Hurlbert said, but a number of new people from the neighborhood have been coming to church.

That area of Asheville doesn’t have many progressive Christian churches, she said, and she hopes that when All Souls’ members return to the cathedral, there will be enough new people to reestablish a worshiping community at St. George’s.

What does Western North Carolina need right now?

The diocese decided not to run volunteer-based rebuilding programs, McLoughlin said in his video, so they do not need people planning to come and help rebuild. Instead, they want to use resources to hire local skilled laborers, both to ensure the work is done carefully and to help revitalize the local economy.

He said the diocese is committed to helping the most vulnerable people recover, but at a sustainable pace with efforts rooted in “the values of dignity, respect and partnership drawn from our baptismal covenant.”

A new disaster response and relief hub on the diocesan website provides additional information, including a virtual volunteer resource guide.

The Rev. Kelsey Davis, the bishop’s deputy for disaster response and recovery, told ENS in an email that anyone wanting to help can make financial contributions through the diocesan website or through their partnership with Episcopal Relief & Development.

They also need donations of campers, mobile homes or vehicles to go to households in need; those with something to donate can contact the diocese by email in advance.

“Please conure to pray for us and follow us on social media,” she added, including on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Beyond that, people can visit the area and spend money to boost local merchants. The Biltmore estate in Asheville is open, Hurlbert said, and many merchants in Biltmore Village are back in business. “Go down to one of the shops,” she said. “Go down and have lunch and walk by the cathedral.” Some places may not have even cleaned up much – it depends on owners and their insurance – but many are ready for customers.

“We need tourism,” she said. “We need the people coming in, because that’s the engine that funds rebuilding.”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.